Yurachek takes pounding while deflecting from Pittman, Razorbacks

It's truly unclear whether Arkansas fans mean what they say.

For years they have asked that the people in charge stop puffing up reality and deliver the facts about what's going on with their athletics department so they can understand why the Arkansas football program is stuck in a slower rebuilding process following the Jeff Long era and the hiring of Chad Morris by an interim athletics director.

No sugar coating. Just give them the cold, hard reality.
Then Yurachek steps up and does exactly that much to their apparent disdain.

In what was a genius calculated move perfectly timed to deflect attention from a difficult loss to Ole Miss that has half the fans claiming doom and gloom while wanting to jump ship, the Arkansas AD made a series of statements he knew would draw the attention from his head coach onto him literally as Sam Pittman sat in a press conference answering for Saturday night.

How is this surprising?

There was a lot to take from Yurachek's statements at the Little Rock Touchdown Club, but one point fans are seizing on is the statement that Arkansas isn't in position to win national championships right now. Fans lost their minds as if this is breaking news to them.

These are the same supposed Hogs fans who wander around talking about how their life is ruined because a group of 18-30 year-olds they don't know are only capable of, in their words, winning three or four games. News flash to these people: Three or four wins won't win anyone a national championship.

The true reality is Arkansas can rack up quite a few wins if the defense can get a few stops this year. However, even if the Hogs get on a heater and squeeze out 10 wins and make the playoffs, there is no one in this state who thinks they're going to make a run to the national title game and mow through Penn State or Ohio State.

That means, everyone agrees that Arkansas isn't set up to win a national title in football right now. Only about seven or eight programs in the entire country can say that truthfully.

So, fans agree. They just don't like that Yurachek said it openly like they do about every five seconds on social media.

Fans don't appreciate what's going on here

One point Yurachek made clear is Arkansas is national championship level good at every sport but football. However, Razorbacks fans keep harping that it doesn't matter the Hogs are good in the other sports while being middle of the pack in football.

They want full effort put into football. First off, fortunately Yurachek is able to recognize that is a lie.

If he ran off Dave Van Horn and John Calipari along with cutting the funding needed to get the level of players those programs have, Arkansas fans would lose their minds. They love seeing the Razorbacks make noise in the NCAA Tournament and they love filling Baum-Walker all spring with hope that this is the season they finally get over the hump and give Van Horn his national title.

They don't want to be like Ole Miss. The Rebels are not built to win a national title in basketball, nor baseball right now.

They went all in on the football route and what it's gotten them so far is a few double-digit win seasons, but not a sniff of an SEC or national championship while from November through August there is nothing to get excited about.

For most of their year, Ole Miss fans live an empty existence. Having covered teams where the sports world dies off after football following years of covering the Razorbacks, it's just not fun at all having nothing else.

Well, he should do something about the money problem

The truth is, Yurachek has done a lot to figure out the money problem, and he's taken a lot of heat for it along the way.

He stopped posting tuition money for every student athlete who wanted to go to summer school. Now, instead of funding early graduates, there is a limited application program for those who need summer school to meet requirements to get their tuition covered.

He then went through his own offices and evaluated each job to see what's not generating money and consolidated the duties of any positions that don't with ones that do. One of the jobs cut was that of Kevin Trainor, a long-time beloved Razorback in the athletics offices and the chief public relations officer to Yurachek.

It wasn't a cut he wanted to make, but Yurachek did it and made sure Trainor had a place to land within the Razorback Foundation while taking tremendous heat for doing what fans complained needed to be done to squeeze dollars out of everywhere but themselves.

The other step Yurachek took was to raise season tickets to current market value and move seating for ticket holders based on what they could afford. Since Arkansas was so far behind because no one before him took the steps to incrementally raise these prices to keep up with sports operation inflation, it was a massive jolt to the fans.

Razorbacks fans fumed because their granny got moved to the upper areas of Bud Walton rather than keeping her premium seating at a discount price. Season tickets were so grossly undercharged that the move generated a reported $10 million.

That's the kind of fund raising progress fans claim they want, but they are so mad it happened that Yurachek begins his speeches by mentioning people in the audience being angry at him for the seating change. Again, they demand the Razorbacks find the money, just not from the fans they entertain.

Missed opportunity

While Yurachek has tried to overcome the "we want great things, but not from my wallet" mentality of Arkansas fans, one area where he has left himself open to legitimate criticism is the stadium naming rights. There's no excuse for the Razorbacks to not be drawing significant revenue from the title sponsor name of the stadium.

It's not like the Reynolds family decided to stop making payments one day, so the university was surprised to suddenly have no money coming in for the name. That was a long contract with plenty of years to see and prepare for when it ran out.

The naming rights should have been nailed down a year or two before the expiration. There was room to take advantage of the positive vibes around Pittman in his early days following the nine-win season of 2021.

Locking up a deal in the summer of 2022 while the Razorbacks were poised to become a Top 10 team just a few weeks into the 2022 season should have been easy money. Instead, Arkansas is pushing into a second year with no deal and Yurachek says it could be another couple of years before anything can be ironed out.

That's four years of lost revenue with no legitimate excuse, although some have been given. There shouldn't be an expectation of perfection in the administrative offices, but there definitely should be an awareness of expiring contracts and a plan in place for what to do when that happens.

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