Sam Pittman isn’t wild about college football having multiple transfer portal windows.

The Arkansas football coach made his annual appearance at SEC Media Days on Thursday, and was asked about the recent trend of college assistant coaches leaving for the NFL. He pointed to the nature of roster management in college football as perhaps one big reason why.

There has been talk of moving to a single transfer portal window, rather than one in December/January and one in April/May as it is now. Pittman said he would prefer one right after the end of the season, rather than after spring practice.

“I do think we can make changes in what we’re doing right now and keep them in college football,” Pittman said. “… I think if we cut down the portal, and made it to one (window), I think that would keep a lot of guys interested and then you have assistants going to the NFL and all that too. I think that would keep them more into college ball.

“But to me, opening a portal after you have spring ball is the craziest thing in the world.

14:58Why would you have spring ball, know your team, and then five or six (players) leave after spring ball? That makes no sense to me whatsoever. … It’s got to be somewhere, in my opinion, in early January or it shouldn’t happen at all.”

Arkansas lost a number of key players to the portal, either in January or April, including tight end Luke Hasz (Ole Miss), wide receiver Isaiah Sategna (Oklahoma) and linebacker Brad Spence (Texas). Freshman quarterback Madden Iamaleava was also with the team in the spring before following brother Nico (last year’s starting QB at Tennessee) to UCLA.

Arkansas went 7-6 and won the Liberty Bowl last season, but Pittman enters the 2025 season firmly on the hot seat. He said there’s one simple way to improve his job security.

“The only ramifications of someone constantly having you on this list or this list or whatever other list is recruiting,” Pittman said. “That’s the only thing. And it seems to affect us a little bit more in the state of Arkansas, because you know they’re up on the Razorbacks.

“Now how can we stop that? We win more games, that’s what we can do. Most things a guy brings on, he brings on himself. Most things that come at you, you earn it. Now you may disagree with some of it and all that, but I’ve earned that. To get off of that, we’ve got to win more games.”