Arkansas HC Sam Pittman feeling pressure with brutal stretch incoming

Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Sam Pittman may be in trouble. In fact, out of all of the coaches in college football right now, he's probably sitting on the hottest seat outside of Florida HC Billy Napier.

Arkansas is 2-2 and coming off a brutal road loss to the Memphis Tigers. Credit to Memphis, because the Tigers have a good program and a great coach in Ryan Silverfield. There's no world in which an SEC team should be losing to an American Conference team, though. 

Now, facing an incredibly tough stretch of SEC games coming up, and the possibility of a third losing season in Fayetteville in six years, Pittman admitted to the media recently that he's feeling the pressure.

Much of it is the pressure that he's put on himself, and he was clear that it's always been this way at Arkansas, but you can tell that Pittman is feeling that hot seat fire up.

“It’d be kind of hard to have more pressure,” Pittman said (h/t On3). “I mean, the pressure you put on yourself is obviously a lot, because you want to do well for a lot of reasons. But I’ve kind of had this same type of pressure for, I don’t know, three years now. It seems like 40, but it’s been about three."

Arkansas heading into tough stretch of games 

Pittman is now 32-33 overall at Arkansas, and there's a decent chance that record is going to get worse. Up next for the Razorbacks is a No. 22 Notre Dame Fighting Irish team that's looking to make a statement and get back to even after starting the season 0-2.

Things don't get any easier from there, though.

After Notre Dame, Arkansas has a game at No. 15 Tennessee, and the rest of its schedule features No. 9 Texas A&M, Auburn, Mississippi State, No. 4 LSU, No. 10 Texas and No. 20 Missouri.

That's a brutal stretch, and if the Razorbacks can't pull it together, there's a chance they end this season on a major losing skid. There's also a chance they can pick up some big wins, though, and in the process, might save Pittman's job. That's why they play the games, after all, because anything can happen.

That's the message Pittman is going with.

“We have an opportunity," he said. "The only way we can get people who don’t believe in us to start having more positive thoughts about our program is to win ballgames — that’s the bottom line. You can say whatever you want, do whatever you want, but at the end of the day, it’s, ‘What’s the score?’ That’s what changes people’s perception."