re: Entered the Portal

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FayetteNAM

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Sam Pittman says Arkansas does not have a problem with what they have available to them for spending in NIL.

With 25 players for the Razorbacks officially in the portal, Pittman addressed how much that funding for name, image, and likeness had to do with that. He explained by noting the two different reasons that players choose to potentially transfer elsewhere.

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“Been a lot of decision-making, you know,” said Pittman. “The portal comes two different ways. It comes by guys wanting to explore opportunities to go play somewhere where maybe they’re not able to play here. There’s the first one.”

“The other one is financially. Obviously, they want to explore what their opportunities may be somewhere else financially. Then us as a staff? We’ve got to make all of those decisions on whether the financial asking price is what we determine the value of the player is,” Pittman explained. “If it is then we try to keep them here. If it’s not then, obviously, we wish them well. If it’s strictly about the financial piece then we know, at that point, we’d be out of it.”

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So, to be clear, the ‘Hogs do have dollars to spend according to Pittman. They just don’t have so much that they can afford to be willing to overpay for any one player, if not multiple.

With where they stand as a program, there are several players they’ll have to pay to keep while also making offers in the portal without even mentioning high school recruiting. That’s why, if a player leaves them by transferring elsewhere, it’s more likely due to budgetary reasons in order for them to put out what they think is the best team for next season in Fayetteville.

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“I do want to be very specific here. We have money,” Pittman stated. “Our donors have been very good financially to us. Revenue sharing coming up here in July. We have money. We’re not losing these kids because we don’t have money. We’re losing them because what our value is to what maybe they can get elsewhere has been, at times, substantially different.”

“We were a 6-6 football team. We’ve got money. So we need to use it wisely,” continued Pittman. “We have 29 visits already set up coming out of the portal. What’s hard, I think, probably, on the fanbase is that we know more about who’s in the portal than probably anybody does.”

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In this era, players are doing what’s best for them in maximizing their opportunities in college. However, programs have to do the same, which is what Pittman says that Razorbacks are doing in some of these decisions with their roster.

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“Basically, it comes down to those two things,” Pittman said. “If we weren’t able to match what the number was out there nationally for somebody? Then we were saying, hey, we believe we can go get somebody as good or somebody, two somebodies for that amount of money.”

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