Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

10/26/2010 at 8:11am

Vanderbilt might not win many games this year. But nobody will beat the Commodores for weirdly timed decisions related to their football staff.

Des Kitchings was promoted to offensive coordinator this week with five games left in the year. Arkansas (5-2, 2-2) hosts Vanderbilt (2-5, 1-3) on Saturday at 6 p.m.

Coach Robbie Caldwell promoted Kitchings to replace Jimmy Kiser. You might remember Caldwell took over as head coach with less than a month remaining until fall practice started.

Changing coordinators might come at an unusual time, but it’s clear the Commodores need to do something. Currently, they rank 105th nationally in total offense, passing offense and scoring offense.

Kitchings told The Tennessean he doesn’t anticipate any major changes in schemes.

"I can't say you'll see a big difference at this stage of the season," Kitchings said. "That would be unfair to the kids. But there are some things we'd like to try to do differently, maybe give us a better chance to be efficient on offense and score some points."

Coach Bobby Petrino said his team would continue to evaluate Vanderbilt game film like they would have without the change.

“They made a little switch in coordinators today, so I’m not sure what that does. We can’t really worry about that. We just have to practice for what they’ve been doing and go against what their tendencies are right now.”

Arkansas has been through this before with an opponent. Then-Auburn Coach Tommy Tuberville fired offensive coordinator Tony Franklin the week of the 2008 Arkansas-Auburn game. Arkansas won 25-22 at Auburn.

Tagged: Vanderbilt, Robbie Caldwell, Des Kitchings, Bobby Petrino, Arkansas Razorbacks