FAYETTEVILLE — Speaking at the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees meeting Friday, Razorbacks athletics director Hunter Yurachek was given an opportunity to clarify comments he made last week at the Little Rock Touchdown Club when he said Arkansas’ football program was “not set up to win a national championship” financially.
While introducing Yurachek during a meeting of the Athletics Committee, trustee Ted Dickey said Yurachek’s Sept. 15 comments at the Little Rock Touchdown Club “were misunderstood” and said the 10-member board is “committing to help football, period.”
“I know you share this objective,” Dickey said. “In the comments made at the Little Rock Touchdown Club, I know what you meant, but it wasn’t obvious and I want to give you a chance to clarify that.”
Yurachek said he “did not speak clearly” when addressing the Little Rock Touchdown Club.
“The group I was most concerned about was the young men that make up our football team and our football staff. I had an opportunity to meet with them last week as an organization and clarify what my statements meant, and that was a group I felt like I really needed to do that for, first and foremost, and that was really important to me,” Yurachek said.
“I was not clear in my response to David Bazzel’s question when he asked about financially how we were set up in this new era of college athletics, and that is on me for not being clear in my answer. I answered the question by saying in sports like men’s basketball and baseball — and you can put our track and field programs in that, along with softball and soccer and women’s golf and men’s golf — we’re set up in those sports really well to compete for and win national championships. And that’s evidenced by six teams that earned a No. 1 ranking during the course of the year last year.”
Yurachek cited examples like the basketball team losing a close game to Texas Tech at the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, the baseball team losing a close game to LSU at the semifinals of the College World Series and the men’s track program coming 1 point shy of winning an indoor national championship earlier this year.
“With our football program, it’s set up a little bit differently,” Yurachek said. “It’s a tougher mountain to climb. It does not mean they are not set up right now to compete for and win a national championship, but they’re not set up as well as those sports I just mentioned to do so. The investment that we’re able to make in our football program right now puts us toward the bottom of the SEC in many budget categories, such as recruiting, travel, operational expenses, support staff salaries, assistant coach salaries and head coach compensation.
“Those other sports, because of the size of the programs and the size of the staff, we can make small, incremental investments that push them toward the top of the SEC and better position them to be able to compete for and win national championships.”
Yurachek said Arkansas can compete and win national championships as part of a 12-team College Football Playoff, too, but added, “It’s just a much steeper hill to climb for our football program than many of our other sports programs.
“I didn’t say that very well at the Little Rock Touchdown Club, and hopefully you understand my remarks today and where I was coming from. I left one key word out and it was ‘well,’ — that football is not as well positioned as many of our other sports to compete for and win national championships.”
Yurachek said to have an opportunity to compete for football titles on an annual basis, “it’s going to take a significant and sustained financial investment, and people across our university committee being aligned that that is what our goal is. We have to have that moving forward if we want to have that opportunity like our other sports do on a regular basis.”
Trustee Steve Cox of Jonesboro, a former Arkansas football kicker and punter from 1979-80, responded to Yurachek’s comments with, “Amen, I like that. I want to win and everybody in this state does, Hunter.”
Following a nearly hour-long presentation and question-and-answer session with Yurachek and the department’s chief financial officer Craig Tigges that covered several topics that were mostly financial in nature, trustee Kevin Crass of Little Rock told Yurachek the board can help ensure the university has campus leadership that is aligned on goals.
“Ted spoke for us and said we’re committed to helping you improve football,” Crass said. “I hope I speak for the board when I say we want the leadership across this campus — athletics director, chancellor, finance people — to be aligned and have thoughtful, collaborative conversations about what do we do to address the challenges in athletics.”
Crass called the Razorbacks “a top-tier” athletics department.
“It’s unfortunate in the world we live in that what happens on a weekend or two can just completely distract from what the truth is,” Crass said, “and that is you have established a very successful athletics program by all these metrics.”
In his opening remarks to begin the Buildings and Grounds Committee session that followed the Athletics Committee, Col. Nathaniel Todd, a trustee from Pine Bluff, called Yurachek’s presentation “clear and directional.”
Friday was the second and final day of a regularly scheduled meeting by the trustees at the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences on the UA campus in Fayetteville.
