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WALLY HALL: Hogs' AD should make players face of program

Hunter Yurachek, director of athletics at Arkansas, watches Saturday, May 25, 2019, during the second day of play in the NCAA Men's Golf Championships at Blessings Golf Club in Johnson.
Hunter Yurachek, director of athletics at Arkansas, watches Saturday, May 25, 2019, during the second day of play in the NCAA Men's Golf Championships at Blessings Golf Club in Johnson.

Dear Hunter Yurachek:

Hope you've had a great summer and are ready for another football season.

While all indications are the University of Arkansas team is going to be more fun to watch, and probably improved, there's been an idea floating around the old gray matter.

It seems the 2-10 season -- which followed a 4-8 campaign, making it five of the past six seasons with a losing SEC record -- has taken a bit of a toll.

Interest is still there, but enthusiasm seems to have waned.

As you know, attendance is dropping at games across the country, which is why you are spending time working on improving the game experience.

A decline in attendance appears to be directly related to so many televised games, but there is another consideration -- lack of information.

For decades, coaches of all sports made the athletes the face of the program.

In the past several years, the trend with coaches has been to follow Bill Belichick's lead and run everything like it was the last room in Fort Knox.

It is more acceptable to do that when you are winning Super Bowls or national championships like Alabama, but Clemson doesn't do it and the demand for tickets is higher than ever.

Sure there is pressure on you to be your own news outlet, which goes against the purpose of a land-grant college and makes you a competitor with all media. Is that what is truly best for the Razorback program?

For years, fans did scrapbooks on players.

Go to Joe Kleine's house and he can put his big hands on his scrapbooks, but he's not always sure where his Olympic gold medal is located.

If fans tried to make a scrapbook on Razorbacks nowadays, they'd need half a glue stick and one sheet of paper.

The trend, as you know, is when players are available -- not including this Saturday's UA football media day -- the coaches pick three, and quite often it is the same three.

Your fans want to know the players on a more personal level.

Make them available for one-on-one interviews. Take requests for players for interviews before practice, but not at times that interfere with classroom work.

An even bigger suggestion, which might help immediately, is open some practices -- and definitely the scrimmages -- to the fans.

People are really curious about who is going to win the quarterback battle and how the offensive line looks. Is the defense going to improve?

The coaches don't want everything available for the internet, so limit filming to the first 20 minutes but let people watch.

Those are the people who make donations and buy tickets.

Houston Nutt not only used to announce in advance when a scrimmage would be but he also encouraged fans to come watch.

A big issue is people might ignore rules and use their phones to record things that might help an opponent if it was posted on social media.

That would mean having some volunteers watching and asking people to not film, but overall it might be worth it, especially the first couple of weeks.

Look, everyone knows you have been incredibly busy and that Chad Morris is focused on football. And in his defense, Morris dealt with a couple of reporters at SMU and now he's got 15 to 20 a day.

And he has gotten much better about getting the players the media want after practice.

Mostly, just make this team the face of the program.

The fans want and deserve to know how their team is doing.

Thanks for reading, hope to see you soon.

P.S. Let's keep these suggestions between us.

Sports on 07/30/2019

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