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Yurachek's opinion of football being competitive in SEC differs from Hogs' tradition

Originally posted on Arkansas Razorbacks on SI
By Jacob Davis | Last updated Sep 16, 2025 10:18 AM ET

Arkansas Razorbacks athletics director Hunter Yurachek said the silent part about Monday when speaking at the Little Rock Touchdown Club.

It’s plainly obvious that Arkansas football, a once respected program across the nation, is not setup to thrive in this new era of college football.

Success starts at the top, and Yurachek, in an effort to fix a lot of the damage created by the Jeff Long tenure, did sixth-year coach Sam Pittman no favors by fighting against NIL for half a decade as his cash cow continues to slip away to the SEC basement.

"I think we are set up to win a national championship in men's basketball moving forward, we know we are set up to win a national championship in baseball moving forward,” Yurachek said “Football, where we are right now, we're not set up to win a national championship I'll just be brutally honest with that."

His resistance to his own student-athletes being paid, whether illegitimately or fair market value doesn’t make sense.

Yurachek’s job is to raise funds for both the Razorback Foundation and NIL. While he seems content at lining the UA’s pocketbook, he is failing the athletes he supposedly advocates for.

How it used to be

There was a time when the Razorbacks football program was nationally relevant among the SEC from 1998-2011. Between two coaches, Houston Nutt and Bobby Petrino, Arkansas went 109-65 overall (60-53 SEC) with seven 9-win seasons, three 10+ win seasons aand one BCS bowl appearance while going toe-to-toe with ranked teams in that period with a 25-40 record.

Former athletics director Jeff Long took over a program with rich tradition just to watch his Roman Empire fall on hard times.

When Yurachek took over, he had every opportunity to regain traction, but doesn't choose his battles wisely when things go against how it used to be.

"Football, where we are right now, we're not set up to win a national championship," Yurachek said. “I think to be competitive, we may have to figure out what the third lane looks like for the the University of Arkansas.”

Arkansas football has certainly fallen on hard times and aren't even competitive in the SEC like Yurachek mentioned. But, he wants to toot his horn about how great of an overall athletics department he governs while letting the cash cow perform at an all-time low.

Not only has Arkansas not been competitive in the SEC since 2012, the overall record is 69-92 overall (32-80 SEC) with a sub-par record against ranked opponents at 13-58 following a loss to No. 17 Ole Miss last week.

Poor, pitiful Arkansas

Instead of talking about how he plans to fix the issue, Yurachek wants to complain about how hard little Arkansas has it compared to everyone else, which is a reflection of the excuse-laden mentality that seems to be within the football complex.

"There's multiple schools that are over $300 million for their operating budget this year that's within the same conference," Yurachek said. "But at the same time, I'll tell you that focus is on football, and we all want to win at football, but at the same time, those schools have been outspending us for the last decade, and we still won more SEC championships among more sports than any school in the SEC and so I think we're doing just fine at the University of Arkansas."

The thing is the Razorbacks football isn't doing just fine as the program is 17-44 (28%) since 2012 in one possession games, which is hardly competitive. At the end of the day, big time college sports is a performance driven business, and while Pittman has stabilized the program compared to how he inherited it, he's not meeting the standard Nutt or Petrino put in place more than a decade ago.

It's not Pittman's fault either because anyone who is a players' coach wants student-athletes to thrive. With an arm tied behind his back, he doesn't stand a chance as long as his boss is in the fight for what he deems is right in college athletics.

Watch Yurachek's full speech at the Little Rock Touchdown Club: