Sam Pittman fires back at Texas critics

“Well, a lot of times critics don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Arkansas Razorbacks fans may pass hatred of the Texas Longhorns down through generations — after all, it’s persisted through three and a half decades in separate conferences — but Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman was ready to sound off in defense of No. 3-ranked Texas ahead of Saturday’s grudge match in Fayetteville after criticism mounted after Tuesday’s College Football Playoff rankings release.

“Well, a lot of times critics don’t know what the hell they’re talking about and I don’t think they know much what they’re talking about on this one, either,” said Pittman on Wednesday’s SEC coaches call.

The criticisms of Texas generally center around the strength of schedule, ranked 56th by ESPN, leading to a No. 10 ranking in the corresponding strength of resume rating — the Longhorns haven’t beaten a single team in this week’s top 25 of the College Football Playoff rankings.

Here’s one resume-based critique of the where Texas is ranked from Danny Kanell, someone who is definitely making the argument in good faith and doesn’t just desperately want attention. Definitely.

Maybe the argument here is really for SMU instead of against Texas, a topic that Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel addressed on Tuesday night when asked specifically about No. 13 SMU and No. 14 Boise State.

“We really judged it based on the performance overall as well as how other teams ahead and behind them performed in terms of ranking, and a lot of the discussion was in that grouping, actually. We spent a lot of time yesterday and today discussing about six or seven teams within that grouping to make sure that we were fully evaluating every team and looking at them against where others were ranked,” Manuel said.

“Ultimately as we voted, they came out in 13 and 14 this week, and we’ll continue to evaluate them as the season progresses.”

The committee is also well aware of the strength of schedule factor for Texas.

“We do have a metric that looks at each individual opponent and so we do analyze every opponent that they play and their strength of record as it relates to that opponent,” Manuel said.

“In terms of strength of schedule, we have overall strength of schedule, but we also have individual strength of records for each team, and that’s part of the analysis that we do and part of the discussion amongst the committee as we evaluate each team.”

But strength of schedule isn’t the only factor. After all, the only part of the schedule that Texas had control over was the non-conference slate set years ago that did include a trip to Ann Arbor to play Michigan. It just so happens that the Wolverines are a .500 team in Sherrone Moore’s first year as a head coach.

As Pittman pointed out, the results against those opponents matter, too.

“This is a damn-fine Texas team. I mean, you don’t go beat Oklahoma by 31 and Mississippi State by 22 and, you know, beat Michigan by 19, beat Colorado State 52-0 and have a sorry football team. I mean, you just don’t,” Pittman said.

That’s true, but there’s also a higher standard for the third-ranked team projected as the second seed because No. 1 Oregon and No. 2 Ohio State are in the same conference and therefore can’t both be in the top four, which are reserved for conference champions in the new format.

Pittman went on to make a more convincing argument in the vein of what the committee might consider.

“These guys are ranked 3 in the country because they deserve it and they’re a really well-coached football team. Coach Sark is one of the best in the business, there’s no question about it. And they’ve got talent,” Pittman said.

“It’s not their fault that they haven’t played, let’s say, a schedule like ours. We’ve played LSU and Ole Miss and A&M and Tennessee. The schedule’s the schedule and what they’ve done is done a damn-fine job with their schedule and they’ve got a good football team.”

Just don’t let any of those Arkansas fans hear about this from Pittman. It might make them physically ill.