INDIANAPOLIS — The video of Dana Altman’s most embarrassing professional moment is on YouTube, shot by a hand-held camera directed at a computer screen, viewed nearly 18,000 times. It was 55 seconds that forever changed Altman’s career.

He stood in the center of Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, Ark., wearing a dark red tie, and made an awkward, halting, clearly uncomfortable effort pumping his fists as Arkansas’s athletic director, Frank Broyles, led the audience in a “Pig Sooie” chant.

“I’m not sure my friends in Omaha would like to see me do that,” Altman told the crowd — an attempt at a joke, but one that carried an ample bit of truth.

Altman had won 260 games in 13 seasons at Creighton, 80 miles from where he grew up, but when Arkansas and the Southeastern Conference came calling in late March 2007, Altman accepted the offer. He was introduced by Broyles and John A. White, the chancellor at the time, on a Monday.