Can good guy Sam Pittman survive a pressure-packed season at Arkansas?

Welcome to SEC Unfiltered, the USA TODAY NETWORK's newsletter on SEC sports. Today, Athens Banner-Herald Georgia beat writer Marc Weiszer takes over:

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey personally introduced 16 head coaches one-by-one over four days last week at the league’s media days in Dallas.

Sometimes he mixed in on-field accomplishments by the coach at his current school. Sankey’s introduction for Arkansas coach Sam Pittman listed Pittman’s own athletic accomplishments and early coaching days and even his new puppy named ‘Latte’ but nothing about what he’s done with the Razorbacks.

That may be because Pittman enters his fifth season in Fayetteville coming off a 4-8 season including 1-7 in the SEC.

If anyone in the SEC would be expected to not make it back for 2025, it would be Pittman.

That may be good for Arkansas ultimately but not for SEC football.

Pittman is one of the good guys and most approachable.

“If we can take 4-20 to 9-4, we can deal with 4-8, too, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Pittman said last week referring to Arkansas' record in the two years before he was hired.

Pittman two years ago was coming off a 9-4 season and looked like a home run hire after being plucked off Kirby Smart’s staff as offensive line coach.

“I'm popular now, just in the wrong way,” he said. “I'm hot."

The guy near the top of hot seat lists said he was one of the top six for a coach of the year award two years ago.

“Listen, what’s fair is fair,” Pittman said. “If you’re going to get patted on the back, you’re going to get punched in the gut. To be honest with you, the only one that can control the hot seat is me and what we do with our football team.”

Pittman’s offensive coordinator this year is Bobby Petrino, who became the butt of jokes as Razorbacks coach when he showed up at a news conference in 2012 wearing a neck collar after a motorcycle wreck with a female passenger who wasn’t his wife.

It isn’t hard to envision Petrino stepping in as interim head coach later this season if Arkansas moves on from Pittman.

It could be tough sledding for anyone near the bottom of a 16-team league.

Making a coaching change is a possible outcome for any teams projected to bring up the rear. Jeff Lebby in his first year at Mississippi State is safe and South Carolina’s Shane Beamer probably is, too, but Pittman, Florida’s Billy Napier and Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea may need to show on-field improvement to have Sankey introduce them again from SEC Media Days in Atlanta in 2025.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Can good guy Sam Pittman survive a pressure-packed season at Arkansas?