Sam Pittman moves down to #6 on our Hot Seat Rankings in what might be college football’s most emotionally complicated coaching situation. He’s the kind of figure who makes fans want to invite him over for dinner while simultaneously wanting to throw their remote through the TV during games. His Arkansas team has shown improvement this year, but in a way that feels like watching a gifted student consistently turn in C+ work – there’s something both promising and maddening about it all. The blowout loss to Ole Miss exposed the fundamental disconnect: a team with SEC talent playing with the discipline of a midnight pickup game. And here’s where it gets interesting – and credit to Jackson Collier of the Hardwood Hogs Podcast (@JCHoops on X) for surfacing a contract provision that adds another layer to this Southern football soap opera: If Pittman can scrape together seven wins between Louisiana Tech and one more victory (including a potential bowl game), he triggers an automatic raise and extension. It’s the kind of clause that transforms Arkansas’s $10 million buyout decision from merely expensive to existentially complex. The boosters’ dilemma is almost Shakespearean: How do you fire someone everyone likes who’s making the team better but not as much better as it should be? Especially when the cost of doing so keeps threatening to go up?