In any normal year, Arkansas would be hosting a number of official and unofficial visitors for its home game with Tennessee and for future home games with LSU and Alabama.
But as we all know, 2020 is far from normal, so this Saturday will be just another day without prospects on campus to take in the atmosphere at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
The NCAA extended the dead period through Jan. 1 and that has kept coaches from visiting prospects or prospects coming to Fayetteville.
It presents a challenge for Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman and his staff, who are doing their best to stay in contact with recruits as the program’s 2-3 start has shown promise after several years of mediocrity under the two previous head coaching hires.
“It’s hard to sell (that atmosphere) right now, to be honest with you,” Pittman said. “They can’t come and all those things. Hopefully they watch it on TV and get a feeling about who we are.
“Right now, we’re trying to sell ourself and our program better than what it has been and all those things. That’s up to the individual on what you think about that. We’re trying to head in the right direction and play good football to give them a reason to come to Arkansas.”
In that vein, Arkansas’ support staff has bombarded prospects with social media and coaches have taken advantage of unlimited phone contact allowed by the NCAA.
“Well, we’re sending out all kinds of stuff all the time,” Pittman said. “Trying to talk about what we’ve done and who we have and awards they’re getting and all this kind of stuff.”
Pittman became the latest SEC coach to question whether Texas A&M, who announced 27,114 as its attendance last week although it appeared much larger than that, is really playing fair and accurate with the SEC suggested guidelines of 25 percent capacity.
“But even the atmosphere is not the (normal) atmosphere unless you go to A&M and then you got a pretty good atmosphere down there,” noted Pittman, whose home crowd is limited to around 17,000.
Florida head coach Dan Mullen was adamant there were 50,000 fans at Kyle Field during his team’s loss to Texas A&M earlier this season. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, when confronted by the Orlando Sentinel sports writer Mike Bianchi about the SEC’s guideline of 25 percent of capacity, basically said he is not the crowd monitor.
“We (the conference office) don’t govern attendance; that is up to campus, local and state health officials,” Sankey said. “I have to take what’s reported to me and we’ve followed up on that, but I’m not the attendance monitor.”
Arkansas has 19 pledges in its 2021 recruiting class. Another spot of the 25 allotted goes to Oklahoma wide receiver Jaquayln Crawford, who is redshirting and practicing with the team this season.
That class is 22nd nationally by both Rivals and 24/7 and 26th by ESPN.
The last Razorback commit was Royse City, Texas, wide receiver Ketron Jackson (6-2, 186) on Sept. 3.
“We have several guys who are committed to us,” Pittman said. “We haven’t had many in the last couple of months. We talked about it in our staff meeting. Right now, everything’s kind of on hold.”
The early signing period is set for Dec. 16-18 while the national signing date is Feb. 3, with football prospects able to sign through April 1.
“I think a lot of the kids are waiting to see if there’s going to be official type visits in January,” Pittman said. “We haven’t gotten that ruling yet.
“I still think there’s going to be a whole bunch of them sign early, but there’s that last group of guys who are going, ‘I don’t want to sign some place I’ve never been to.’ And heck, I don’t blame them.”
Arkansas has done its best to focus on the 2022 class, where they have offered nine in-state prospects and have a trio of pledges in Greenland defensive end JJ Hollinsgworth (6-4, 250), Dewitt tight end Dax Courtney (6-6, 210) and Duncan, N.C., Brynes offensive lineman Eli Henderson (6-4, 290).
“…We’re in a little bit of a holding pattern it seems like to me,” Pittman said. “We’re trying to attack the ’22 class. We’ve got a pretty good number in the ’21 class, but we’re trying to go after the ’22 class, particularly in the state of Arkansas.”