Arkansas coach Sam Pittman made some waves last week when he spoke out about the dangers of social media as it applies to mental health. Now, with Ole Miss next on the slate, Pittman will be facing perhaps the modern-day king of social media in the college football realm in Rebels coach Lane Kiffin.
Most coaches, Pittman said, use social media, specifically X (formerly known as Twitter) largely as a recruiting tool. Coaches are their job personalities online for the most part. That isn’t the case with Kiffin, who at SEC Media Days over the summer, divulged his approach to the online space.
“I just started it and I was like I kind of want to feel like a normal person and comment just like if I was a normal person, or retweet things without having a meeting with my SID before where we figure out whether this is a proper thing to tweet that everybody will like and stuff,” Kiffin said.
Pittman rarely tweeted things that weren’t re-tweets. And his more old-school approach – Pittman is 61 versus Kiffin’s age of 48 – reflects his ambivalence to social media. Part of the reason the Arkansas coach removed his account on X was because of the hateful messages he and his players often received, some of which had nothing to do with football.
Kiffin, meanwhile, will give it right back to fans on occasion. It’s an approach that’s earned him equal amounts of respect and animus.
“He’s great at it. I look at coach Kiffin in that as he just doesn’t care. I don’t know. I can’t speak for the man,” Pittman said. “But if somebody says something to him, he’ll come right back. I bet it doesn’t bother him an ounce. If he wants to make a joke on there about something. I think he’s special. He has a special gift there that I don’t think it bothers him.”
Pittman, meanwhile, has yet to re-activate his account, even against the advice of his football communications’ staff. He said he would probably be forced to, eventually, but don’t expect him to be anything like the Ole Miss coach.
“He just goes with it and obviously I wish I had that ability. I don’t,” Pittman said. “But I respect how he handles all that. He takes some jabs and I think it’s all in good nature, though.”