The Razorback head coach and his wife Jamie have made 17 moves across 35 years. This landing spot might just be his last.
She unpacked the boxes. All of them. Every time.
Even when she knew in her gut that they would be moving again in 12 months (or less), Jamie Pittman always unpacked everything, always did her best to make that time in a new house in a new town with a new job and new friends as normal as possible. Home would be home, not a transitional living space.
Her husband Sam, a gifted offensive line coach, would be in demand and get a better job. Or the head coach he worked for would get fired. Something would inevitably happen that sent them on their way again. So much free gear to give away, so many new things to learn—fight songs, rivalries, traditions. The churn was constant.
But wherever they landed, Jamie planted herself with conviction. “You just have to enjoy every stop,” she says. “You make great friends at every new place, and then it’s on to the next adventure.”
Until now, perhaps. At stop No. 17 on their Football Coaching Life Tour, Sam and Jamie Pittman are ready for their last adventure. Pittman, age 59, is the second-year head coach at Arkansas. He paid decades of dues to get his shot; he was hired to tepid reviews; then he seized the opportunity like a man who couldn’t wait for this chance to prove himself.
Pittman dragged the proud Arkansas program up off rock bottom last year, going 3–7 with several narrow losses, vastly improving the competitive quality of the team. Now the 4–0 Razorbacks have taken off: They’re ranked eighth in the country after authoritative wins over Texas and Texas A&M, riding fresh momentum into an unexpected showdown with No. 2 Georgia between the hedges Saturday. If votes were cast today for national Coach of the Year awards, Pittman would likely win.
To use Pittman’s own pet phrase, yessirrrrr, it’s been a long time coming. A lifetime of boxes packed and unpacked. It has been easier to get through than it would have been with children, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Let Jamie be the guide through every new location.
Beggs, Oklahoma. The year: 1986. “What have I gotten myself into?”
They were newlyweds, having met in Pittsburg, Kansas. Sam had just finished his playing career at Division II Pittsburg State and was a graduate assistant coach; Jamie was a Pittsburg native. It didn’t take long for them to fall in love and get married, but Jamie got a word of warning from Sam’s dad about the lifestyle she was about to embark upon after Sam was hired at Beggs High School, a map dot on State Highway 16 in Okmulgee County, about 35 miles south of Tulsa.
“You’re never going to see your husband,” he told her.
Jamie knew very little about sports. Her home life was out of the American archetype: her dad came home from work at 5 o’clock, they ate dinner together at 6, and they had family time thereafter. This was a sudden departure.
“He was getting home at 10 o’clock,” she says. “I was not very happy.”
“Jamie,” he told her, “this is coaching.”
Princeton, Missouri. The years: 1987–88. “That felt like a long way from Pittsburg.”
Nestled up against the Iowa border, Princeton was about four hours from where Jamie grew up in southern Kansas. After getting married at age 24 and figuring out that her new life would include a lot of alone time, Jamie went to school so she could work in the medical field. “I had to find something,” she says.
Sam had found a job as the head coach at Princeton High. The couple moved into a house on the 50-yard line, directly across the street from the stadium. Jamie could open the front door and holler at her husband to end practice and come home for dinner. Sometimes the players would come with him. Their dog, an English bulldog, became the team mascot. “That was a fun two years,” she says. “We were just kids.”
Trenton, Missouri. The years: 1989–90. End of the high school days.
Jamie welcomed this relocation about 30 miles south from Princeton because she was already working for a doctor in Trenton. The town had a couple of faded claims to fame: it once was the world’s largest producer of Vienna sausages (which should appeal the residents of Vienna, Austria), and it was the hometown of 1920s bank robber Roy Gardner. Sam Pittman’s tenure as coach of the high school wasn’t quite as memorable.
Hutchinson, Kansas. The years: 1991–93. “A really good Mexican restaurant downtown.”
Hutchinson Community College, northwest of Wichita, hired Sam as its offensive line coach. Jamie was excited to be back in her home state, closer to home. But part of Sam’s workload was serving as dorm director, and the couple lived in one of the dorms for their first three months in town. That was less than ideal.
They moved into a rental house, and Sam applied a new coat of paint to the exterior while Jamie added some touches to the inside. The owner liked what they did so much that he kicked them out and moved back into the place.
But they came to enjoy the college-town atmosphere, including the Mexican restaurant where they ate a couple of times a week. Sam immediately improved the line play. After a season he was promoted to head coach, and Hutch ended a streak of six straight non-winning seasons under Pittman. That culminated in a berth in the Valley of the Sun Bowl—which was Pittman’s last game as a head coach for 27 years.
DeKalb, Illinois. The years: 1994–95. A move up the ladder to Division I.
Pittman’s work began to resonate with college coaches during his stint at Hutch, and Charlie Sadler hired him at Northern Illinois. “We really liked it there,” Jamie says. “Northern was a lot of fun, the staff was all like family. It was really cold, but we liked it there.”
But Sadler was fired after Sam’s second season on the job. That led to a move farther east than they’d been before.
Cincinnati, Ohio. The year: 1996. If you thought the workdays were long before ….
A Dec. 19, 1995, story in the Cincinnati Enquirer mentions a couple of changes to the Bearcats’ coaching staff. Among them: John Harbaugh promoted to assistant head coach; Rex Ryan arriving as the new defensive coordinator; and a sentence devoted to the hiring of Sam Pittman as tight ends coach. Jamie got a medical job working downtown.
Cincinnati head coach Rick Minter was single, Jamie says, and he expected everyone on the staff to spend day and night at the football facility. Jamie remembers Sam leaving for work at 6 a.m. and not returning until after midnight. “That was a hard job,” Jamie says.
That was a lot of work to go 6–5 for the second straight season, but it did lead to another new opportunity.
Norman, Oklahoma. The years: 1997–98. “Our first taste of big-time football.”
John Blake was the second-year coach of the Sooners, bringing back program familiarity after a disastrous one season under outsider Howard Schnellenberger. But as much as Blake won the hearts and minds of fans with his personality—“he was a fun, fun guy,” Jamie says—he didn’t win many games. Blake and his staff were dismissed after the ’98 season.
Kalamazoo, Michigan. The year: 1999. “A hard move.”
In coaxing Jamie into their coldest locale yet, Sam “told a story” about what his salary was going to be. Jamie later found a pay stub that showed he’d inflated the number. Jamie also was still trying to sell their house in Oklahoma for much of their time at Western Michigan.
But Sam enjoyed working with offensive coordinator Bill Cubit, and their wives hit it off and remain good friends today. After that season, they were a package deal heading back to the Big 12.
Columbia, Missouri. The year: 2000. High socks and a pink slip.
Larry Smith hired Cubit to be his OC and Pittman to coach his line at Mizzou. Smith had done the improbable, breathing life back into a moribund program and taking the Tigers to their first bowl games in 15 years, in 1997 and ’98. But the momentum had stalled and Smith made staff changes after a 4–7 backslide in ’99. When Missouri went 3–8 in 2000, everyone was fired.
Jamie’s memory of that season: “Sam had a lot of respect for Larry. But he made all the coaches wear high socks. He didn’t like the low ones.”
Lawrence, Kansas. The year: 2001. Another firing.
This was another move back to Jamie’s home state, which she loved. “I was so excited about that job,” she says. She worked for an OB/GYN and made a lot of friends. But Sam’s penchant for hiring on with coaches who had about run their course continued. After Terry Allen recorded a fifth straight losing season, he and the staff were fired.
Lawrence, Kansas. The year: 2002. That one fall Sam Pittman didn’t coach.
Jamie says Sam was still being paid by Kansas that year, and was more choosy about his next stop after four moves in four years. So they stayed in Lawrence, and she kept her job. It’s the only year of Sam’s adult life that he wasn’t spending his weekends coaching or playing football.
DeKalb, Illinois. The years: 2003–06. Northern Illinois, Part Two.
When Sam told Jamie that they were heading back to NIU, she went into the bathroom and cried. But this, at last, was a solid situation after so many win-or-be-fired seasons. Joe Novak had the program winning.
When Sam came onboard, the winning accelerated. NIU went 10–2 his first season, then 9–3 the next. The Huskies had four straight winning seasons and for a while Sam believed he was in line to be the next head coach after Novak, who was near retirement. But after being given a sense that it wouldn’t happen, the Pittmans were on the move again.
By this point, the dream of becoming a major-college head coach was starting to fade. “He started getting older and thought it was never going to happen,” Jamie says. “Looking back, it’s funny how it all works out.”
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, The years: 2007–11. “We thought we were going to retire there.
At the time, this was the Pittmans’ favorite stop. They loved Chapel Hill. Sam loved working for Butch Davis, and Jamie became close friends with Tammy Davis. They bought a lot in Pinehurst, with designs on building a retirement home there. The Tar Heels were winning, going to three straight bowl games.
But an agent scandal that centered on Pittman’s former boss and current fellow UNC assistant, James Blake, led to a major NCAA investigation and a mid-summer boring of Davis. Everett Withers was named the interim head coach and Pittman stayed on staff through that season, but he would not be retained.
Knoxville, Tennessee. The year: 2012. Take down the Christmas decorations.
After a struggle to sell the house in North Carolina, Jamie didn’t arrive at Tennessee with Sam until the summer of 2012. Once again, this was a job gotten on the rebound with a head coach up to his neck in quicksand. After being blown out by Vanderbilt on Nov. 17, Derek Dooley was fired. Jamie had just decorated the house for Christmas when her husband came home and told her they were moving again.
Fayetteville, Arkansas. The years: 2013–15. At home playing big-boy ball with Bielema.
This was a happy landing place. Bret Bielema had just been the surprise hire away from Wisconsin, and he wanted an offensive line coach who would embrace his run-heavy, power style of play. Enter Pittman, at once coming in at the beginning of a head coach’s tenure instead of the end.
“We were so happy to be here,” Jamie says. “We loved it. I thought, ‘This is it. We’re not leaving.’ “
There was just one problem with staying forever, and that problem was Sam’s friend Kirby Smart. An assistant under Nick Saban, Smart had already told Sam that if he got a big-time head coaching job, he would hire Sam without even bothering to make him interview. And then …
Athens, Georgia. The years: 2016–19. The silent treatment for a year.
When Smart was hired at Georgia, Jamie knew the call was coming and that they were leaving her favorite locale. She says she barely spoke to Sam for the first year at Georgia.
“I was madder than mad,” she says. “But I truly believe he learned a lot from Kirby, and I don’t think he would be the head coach at Arkansas if he hadn’t worked for Kirby at Georgia.”
Fayetteville, Arkansas. The years: 2020-present. The end. … For now.
Arkansas’s head-coaching job opened early last year, on Nov. 10. The Pittmans wished he could get involved, but didn’t have much hope. They made some back-channel inquiries, but the search was going in other directions.
Then, Jamie’s phone rang on Sunday, Dec. 8, the day bowl bids went out and Georgia was ticketed for the Peach Bowl against Cincinnati. The caller: Jon Fagg, deputy athletic director and a friend from their previous stay in Fayetteville. His question: “Would Sam be interested in our head-coaching job?”
Jamie’s response: “Is this a joke? Of course he would.”
Jamie says she “about passed out” before calling her husband at the Georgia football facility. The wheels started rolling immediately: Arkansas’s athletic brass would fly in that day, and if they were going to do that, they meant business.
Jamie dashed out for Starbucks and pastries, putting out a spread on the dining-room table. Athletic director Hunter Yurachek offered the job. When he produced a contract for Sam to peruse, offering far more than he’d ever made as an assistant, he asked for a minute to talk to his wife in private.
“We grabbed each other, and he put his hand over my mouth to keep me quiet,” Jamie says. “We were so excited, so happy.”
The pace accelerated from there. Deal agreed upon, they were to fly back to Fayetteville that night. Jamie hustled to find a dog sitter for their latest English bulldog, put on an Arkansas-red outfit, and off they went to their latest (last?) relocation.
This time, Jamie was sure enough that she bought Arkansas sweatshirts for her entire family for Christmas in 2019. (A five-year contract will provide the assuredness to take that risk.) And the results since have only added to their security. At this point, the love from the fans is a bit overwhelming. “They treat you like somebody you’re not,” Jamie says. “They act like you’re a celebrity.”
This week, a woman stopped her car in the street when she saw Jamie trying to put money in a parking meter, introduced herself and handed her the change to pay for the parking. Occasionally cars will drive past the Pittman house and yell out the window, “Woooo, Pig, Sooie!”
Sam and Jamie Pittman’s last move has been their best move. It took far longer to reach this point than it probably should have, but the wait is worth it when you stick the final landing.
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