FAYETTEVILLE -- University of Arkansas Chancellor Joe Steinmetz and his wife Sandy scheduled a short getaway to visit one of their sons in Indiana a couple of weeks ago.
But during the coronavirus pandemic, work was never far away.
"We left a week ago to drive to Indiana, and I had about an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minute SEC call while I was in the car," Steinmetz told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on July 30. "Sandy was driving so I could pay attention to what was going on, which was probably a good thing."
While at their son's home, there was time for much-cherished visiting, but important work communications were a constant.
"Probably during the space of time I was at my son's house, there were probably five or six other meetings and telephone calls and things that came up during that time," Steinmetz said. "So most of them were about things that just couldn't wait until I got back."
Steinmetz returned to Fayetteville on July 30, just in time to jump on the early afternoon video conference with fellow SEC presidents, chancellors and the league office. That lengthy chat resulted in the confirmation of the SEC's decision to plan for a 10-game, conference-only football schedule.
The pandemic has turned normally slower-paced summers into a marathon -- oddly punctuated by daily sprints -- of planning, meeting, and decision-making for university administrators and athletic department staffs across the country.
And there's no end in sight.
The discussions and difficult decisions started in mid-March. Oftentimes, plans that were being put in place for dealing with the crisis would have to be scrapped on short notice to yield to new plans based on changing data or circumstances.
In mid-July, Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek was asked what it might take for the plug to be pulled on fall sports in their entirety.
"I think we live in the hypothetical right now, so you're asking a hypothetical question, and I feel like I've been trying to answer hypothetical questions," he said.
And so it's gone for administrators around the country, where no answer seems 100% right.
However, with the start of football camps becoming reality in some areas of the country -- including an Aug. 17 start for SEC schools -- some key decisions are upon college athletics while others have been made.
Maximum capacities at stadiums are still under discussion, and in-season outbreak protocols are surfacing.
The SEC announced its plan for conference-only games July 30. While executive associate commissioner Mark Womack was working to put the complicated scheduling puzzle together, other conference leaders were hard at work exploring dozens of collateral issues and the viability of other sports.
What kind of scheduling will be in place for the other fall sports of cross country, soccer and volleyball? Conference officials and league athletic directors are working on that plan.
SEC schools also play a fall season in golf, one of the sports least affected by social-distancing guidelines. Will it go on with perhaps conference-only tournaments rotating around various SEC campuses? If there's no season, the seniors who were given extra years of eligibility back in March could decide there are better options than returning to school.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey compared what college leaders are going through to building a bridge while already crossing the river, and writing the instruction manual along the way.
"What we have to understand is we've never been through this before," Sankey said in an appearance on the SEC Network in mid-July. "I wish I had the charts and playbook to say, 'Here are the simple answers.' There are no simple answers."
Yurachek has said no crisis in his professional life has compared to the challenges presented by the pandemic.
"July is when we are normally taking some time off as administrators," Yurachek said on a video chat last month. "But that's just not going to happen this year. There's too much on the line for us."
At one stage during the crisis, Yurachek said he felt "mediocre" about the chance of having a football season. That increased to about 90% after the SEC announced its 10-game plan.
"That's what really feels good to know that we have a plan put in place," he said. "You guys have followed this virus as much as I have since March 11. It changes on a regular basis, and this plan could change. But right now, I feel really good about the advice and what the models are showing. This is a great opportunity for us to play college football this year."
Sankey discussed on the SEC Network how administrators across the SEC understood the gravity of their decision to implement a conference-only schedule.
"You could feel the weight among my colleagues, those at the presidents and chancellors level and those at the athletic directors level," Sankey said. "There will always be different opinions.
"The good news is our presidents, our chancellors are very engaged. They know how important this conference is, how important their universities are to their state and their locales, but also how important the opportunity to compete for young people is and will be. And that's really the guiding star. To do it in a healthy way and to minimize risk as much as possible. But to work to carry forward, in this circumstance in a very deliberate way."
ESPN.com's Ivan Maisel documented how the crisis has stretched the workloads and tested the endurance of athletic directors, who still have budget balancing and potential cuts to worry about.
"It's been extremely difficult," Kansas Athletic Director Jeff Long, the former Arkansas AD, told Maisel. "This has been the most challenging stretch of my personal career."
Long -- who is preparing for a 20% reduction in revenue this year, which equates to about $23 million -- enacted furloughs and pay cuts at Kansas that saved about $1.15 million for the department, Maisel reported.
In the same piece, Maisel asked Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez about the difficulty of dealing with tough decisions day after day during the pandemic.
"It's frustrating," Alvarez told him. "It is really frustrating. There are things you want to do, things you think are right. But you can't. You can't get ahead of yourself."
Steinmetz said in his 35 years in higher education nothing has compared to coping with the pandemic.
"What I say often is I've never had to make what I think are so many critical decisions in such a short period of time before, and a situation that's completely fluid," Steinmetz said. "And all we would have had to do was look four to six weeks ago at where we were with the virus at that time and could not make a prediction of where we are now, and the same thing goes for four weeks from now. And so this is just an incredible time, an incredibly difficult time for our faculty, for our staff and our students as well."
As of now, Arkansas stands to lose two home games from what would have been the first-ever season with seven on-campus home games. Yurachek said the Razorbacks' revenue reductions would run parallel with the number of lost football games for a department that derives roughly $70 million of its $124 million budget from revenue tied to football.
As the crisis continues, UA decision-makers have kept their focus on what matters, Steinmetz said.
"I have to give Hunter a lot of credit for one major thing," he said. "Never once in a conversation that I've had with Hunter did he really sway from the idea that the health and welfare and well-being of the student-athletes -- from an academic perspective as well as a physical perspective -- was the most important thing that we needed to pay attention to.
"And I deeply appreciate that because I suspect there are other athletic directors at other places around the country that are much more worried about the financial impact and some other things than they are about the welfare of the students themselves, so I have to really applaud Hunter for that."
Similarly, Yurachek has applauded first-year football Coach Sam Pittman for his composure since March.
"Sam Pittman has been unbelievable," Yurachek said. "For someone who's never been a head coach other than at the junior college level early in his tenure, he has handled everything that has been thrown at him and his staff like he is a seasoned veteran head coach. I've been incredibly impressed.
"I hope we get to play football just for him because I know he's been waiting a lot time for this opportunity and he's handled it like a champ."