Yurachek updates fans on variety of issues as One Razorback Road Show gets underway

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

BENTONVILLE – The One Razorback Road Show got underway on Monday with its closest stop on an eight-city, four-day tour.


Arkansas Director of Athletics Hunter Yurachek, head football coach Sam Pittman, head gymnastics coach Jordyn Webber and new head women’s head basketball coach Kelsi Musick were greeted by a packed house at Bentonville’s Brothers Meathouse.

Yurachek, who has been mentioned with other AD jobs, noted he and his wife just bought a house built in 1896, are actively remodeling it and planning to be around.

“We are here to stay and we’re not going anywhere,” Yurachek said.
Yurachek acknowledged his job isn’t going to get any easier as it becomes more difficult in today’s college sports landscape.
He has to come up with around estimated $25 million dollars to fund extra scholarship and revenue sharing.
Ways that will happen are cutting operational budgets for all 19 of Arkansas sports, not giving out cost of living adjustments and no incentive-based merit raises.

“I feel like I’m the least-liked person probably across our department because we’re having to fix a $21 million problem, so we’re doing that by reducing expenses,” Yurachek said. “We’re making some sacrifices internally, so you can tell by making those sacrifices internally, maybe my staff’s not as happy as they normally would be with that.”

Yurachek noted that Arkansas had the 12th largest sports budget in the SEC, but got fourth-place overall results.

To continue that it will take keeping up with the other schools.

“If we want to remain competitive in the SEC, we’ve got to share the $20.5 million revenue just like everyone else in the league is,” Yurachek said. “If we fall short of that, we’re going to be fighting an uphill battle to remain competitive in our sports.”

Yurachcek also touched on the basketball reseating plan at Bud Walton Arena – something that he got major criticism for when it was announced.

He told the Razorback crowd that over 10,000 season ticket requests had been receive and 1,000 new members had been added to the Razorback Foundation.

Yurachek also noted that $8 million had been raised for the annual fund and an additional $4 million gathered as fans trying to improve their seats with increased donations.
“That’s been a huge success in spite of some of the negative feedback we got early on,” Yurachek said.

The question of getting NIL money back from quarterback Madden Iamaleava – who transferred to UCLA – was brought up by a fan.

“Blueprint Sports is the umbrella company for Arkansas Edge, which is our collective,” Yurachek said. “It is an outside company that owns the specific contact that you spoke of. They have engaged the services of Arkansas attorney Tom Marrs. He is well know through college athletics.

“Right now they are trying to enter into a settlement of some type to avoid going to court.”

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Pittman was happy with his team’s portal pick ups, the 14 spring practices his team got in and s looking forward to getting players back after the current school break.

“The second portal was really good for us as well,” Pittman said. “We feel really good about what we got in both portal periods

“…Our offensive line is bigger. We had been a little smaller than the other teams, but now we look like an SEC team and we have the sped of an SEC team.

“The guys will be back Memorial Day weekend and we will be ready to roll then. We get eight weeks of lifting in and one discretionary week.”
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Weiber, who announced she was pregnant with a daughter and mentioned her teams recruiting class being No. 2 nationally and move to Bud Walton Arena this past season.

“One of my missions and goals when I stepped in Arkansas six years ago was to build on a fan base and the support that we have has been great and the support of people in Northwest Arkansas and Arkansas in general hasn’t been great,” Weiber said. “It is a really fun sport to watch.
…It is a whole experience, not just a sporting event and we have surpassed our season tickets sale all of the six years that I have been here. We had growth to the point that we outgrew Barnhill Arena.”

Yurachek said Arkansas will be trying to break the record for gynamstic attendance when Arkansas host Oklahoma this upcoming season.
• • •

Musick noted her team has 13 players on her roster at this point.

“It’s been a whirlwind, but it has been amazing,” Musick said. “I got my staff in place so that a huge get and we were in the middle of the portal as soon as I got hired.

“We have 13 players on our roster and gave two more spots to fill potentially…We’ll have a couple of more visits to finalize that roster.”

Photo by John D. James