The state's most popular man wants his big salary doubled. And I don't hear any outcry from people otherwise letting resentment consume them.
That's close enough to a political story to invite me to fill a little space.
On a lovely late-September day, several 60-something Arkansas gentlemen sat around having lunch after senior doubles tennis. Lunch was a splurge with burgers from the greasy joint. I joined only for the food, not wanting to burden myself with exercise before heavy nourishment.
I listened mostly as these fine fellows chatted about what is real happiness for 60-something Arkansas gentlemen. That would be the then-fresh Razorback football victories over Texas and Texas A&M.
The conversation seemed to conclude that the coach, Sam Pittman, was a big ol' and good ol' boy who only ever wanted to be the head coach at Arkansas. It was that he was lifetime-committed to this job, which was worlds better than the assistant's jobs he'd long held. Thus he wouldn't be going anywhere or costing us an arm and leg the way Eric Musselman, as a hotter and younger property, might. (This was well before Saturday's Oklahoma game.)
The season had a little sinking spell, but rallied to 8-4, which is about the best a coach not a weird savant on a motorcycle could hope to do at Arkansas.
A 60-something Arkansas gentleman knows Cotton Bowls, Sugar Bowls and Orange Bowls and even a version of the national championship. But he understands that was mostly pre-integration, pre-SEC, pre-scholarship limit. Nowadays he'll take a 2-to-1 ratio of joy to agony each fall and a nice holiday trip for a bowl.
At Arkansas, 8-4 is tantamount to three or four Alabama national championships. It comes against what may well be, year in and out, the nation's toughest schedule. Teams in our conference division don't have schedules quite as tough as ours because they get to play us while we have to play them.
About half the games will pit our three-star and four-star recruits against their four-star and five-star recruits from more populated and talent-fertile areas. That takes a compounding toll over four or five years, even if some of our guys are underrated and some of theirs overrated.
Anyway, I didn't think anything more about the happy subjects of Pittman and pay until I cruised this paper's website Saturday afternoon. There I saw a special short column posted by sports editor Wally Hall.
It said that Pittman had retained super-agent Jimmy Sexton--he's a renowned hard-baller--to try to rework his contract, which is otherwise effective until 2024. It said the Pittman-Sexton team had surprised UA officials by making an opening proposal that Sam be paid $7 million a year.
He now makes $3.75 million as the second-lowest paid coach in the conference, trailed only by Vanderbilt, which doesn't count. And $750,000 of that is a new raise based on his contract giving him one-time incentive raises of $250,000 each for his sixth, seventh and eighth wins in a season. Those are one-time raises and the third $250,000 is for eight-or-more wins, meaning Sam has topped out on that.
I like that contractual reliance on victories for raises. I'd like it better if the coach had to give back $250,000 for each victory of fewer than six in a season, which would have had Chad Morris working for free. And that, yes, was gratuitous. I should be ashamed. But somehow I'm not.
I linked Wally's column on Twitter, and, right away, a fellow replied that the matter would not end well because Arkansas people like winning but they hate greed more.
And that was that. Otherwise, I'm hearing no griping, much less outrage.
What I am hearing instead is that, hey, Sam's a good guy and he's entitled to sign on with this fancy agent to get whatever the guy can get for him in the current market. I'm also hearing that we shouldn't assume he wouldn't ever go anywhere else. Another 8-4 season at Arkansas will have somebody calling, people are saying.
I'm fine with it, not that I have anything to do with it, being not a booster but only a smart-aleck live-tweeter during games watched from living-room comfort.
I would recall for the record that we did this once before recently. We jacked up Bret Bielema's pay north of $4 million when he went 8-5. And then he went 4-8. The problem was not so much that were paying more than a million per win, but that we'd given Bielema a buyout that made him filthy rich for being fired for lousy performance.
So, two points: One is that the UA and its boosters should pay Sam whatever they want, but protect themselves in the buyout. The other is to understand the reality for Arkansas football, which is that a good coach can go 8-4 one year and get a raise to go 4-8 the next, the difference being only luck and whether Treylon Burks played for him.
Just so we're all right with that.
As always: Woo pig.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.