FAYETTEVILLE -- University of Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek gave a revised financial update for the department on Thursday that projected a bigger fiscal year deficit than originally anticipated.
However, Yurachek did not sound a dire alarm regarding the state of the department finances 10 months into the covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking on a wide range of topics during a 30-minute video conference with the media, Yurachek said the revenue shortfall that was projected to be in the $20 million to $25 million range prior to the football season now looks to be steeper.
"That's probably closer to $25-30 million dollars after we closed out football season," Yurachek said. "We're roughly halfway through basketball season, and we kind of feel like we know what we're going to be able to do with baseball season.
"So we've had to make a few adjustments to our budget on the expense side because of those anticipated revenue shortfalls growing, but we feel like we're in pretty good shape still."
The 2020-21 budget for UA athletics was projected to be about $124 million, with roughly $70 million of it tied to football, so fiscal-year revenues now project to be between 20% to 25% short.
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Yurachek gave an update on the most recent coronavirus testing numbers and fall semester grades in athletics, commented on recent events in the basketball, football and baseball programs, and shared a light-hearted anecdote about a text exchange he had with women's basketball Coach Mike Neighbors regarding the rapid-fire scheduling of national power UConn on Wednesday.
"Mike Neighbors sent a text to me when Vanderbilt dropped out of the season and wanted to know if he could replace Vanderbilt with Connecticut," Yurachek said. "Quite honestly I thought he was kidding when he sent me that text.
"He was dead serious. He said, 'I've talked to our team. They want to play the best. They enjoyed competing against Baylor and enjoyed competing against South Carolina and the rigors of the SEC schedule.' Connecticut ... [was] looking for games and it just made a great deal of sense to try to get them here."
The Razorbacks will host the No. 3 Huskies on Thursday at 4 p.m.
Arkansas athletics has not been overly generous with releasing covid-19 testing data, but Yurachek shared a positive update.
He said the department surpassed 18,000 total covid-19 tests among athletes, staff and support personnel on Wednesday since testing began on June 1.
"We've got a positivity rate below 1.2%," Yurachek said. "Currently among our 12 sports that are competing, we have zero positive cases of covid among those 12 sports.
"We've had the opportunity to compete in 91 events to date and we've competed successfully in 90 of those 91 events, our bowl game in Texas being the only event to date that had to be canceled."
Arkansas was scheduled to take on TCU in the Texas Bowl on Dec. 31, but due to low roster numbers in the Horned Frogs' program the game was canceled on Dec. 29.
Yurachek praised the debut season of football Coach Sam Pittman and expressed support for how the Razorbacks were able to retain "hot commodity" defensive coordinator Barry Odom and quickly replace receivers coach Justin Stepp with Kenny Guiton.
Odom had been targeted by LSU Coach Ed Orgeron and new Texas Coach Steve Sarkisian, according to reports, but Odom elected to stay on board a second season.
"Barry has that experience sitting in the head coaching chair in the Southeastern Conference and it's been invaluable to Coach Pittman this year and it will be invaluable going forward," Yurachek said. "Our student-athletes on the defensive side of the ball love him. He obviously created schemes that put us in positions to have some success throughout the season and he's an important piece of our puzzle. Just continuity in general among your coaching staff is very important."
Yurachek added he has had discussions with Pittman about some financial clauses in Pittman's contract regarding win levels and whether some of those might be honored after the Razorbacks posted a 3-7 record against an All-SEC schedule. In a normal year, that would have equated to six or seven total wins.
"Coach Pittman and I have discussed some parameters within his current contract multiple times, and we're working through some of those," Yurachek said. "I think you'll see something here in the next month or so related to that."
Yurachek revealed he had met with key donors to help the Razorbacks stay competitive in coaching hires even with the financial burden of wrapping up buyout payments to former football Coach Chad Morris, defensive coordinator John Chavis and others.
"I went out and met with several of our donors and created through our Razorback Foundation what I call the 'Football Enhancement Fund' that would provide Coach Pittman the opportunity to spend those resources to hire and retain the best coaches, to buy the type of equipment he needed for the Smith Center, to recruit where that didn't have to come from an operational budget," Yurachek said.
"When covid hit, it was more than necessary. The raises that were given to Coach Odom and any of his other staff members, they're coming right now, at least for the next two years, from that Football Enhancement Fund, not coming from any operational dollars."
Yurachek was asked to project what he thought the start of the 2021 football season would look like from a scheduling, practicing and crowd capacity standpoint.
"We're going to launch our football season ticket campaign in late February, early March with the anticipation of having full capacity at Razorback Stadium," Yurachek said. "We're going to sell it that way. We'll release our full football schedule here through the SEC office in the next week to 10 days. We're anticipating things returning to some sense of normalcy, that's my crystal ball outlook of what I think right now."
Yurachek said the one issue that keeps him awake at nights is covid testing.
"I mean, that's just the ability to continue to compete in games," he said. "There was a significant value any time we would have lost an SEC football game, from a television revenue standpoint.
"We're already hemorrhaging a great deal of revenue right now. We didn't want to lose more revenue. We have not laid any staff members off. We did have the early retirement.
"Everybody has taken a pay cut, but we have not had to lay any of our employees off or terminate any employment within our department. Taking care of our staff, taking care of our student-athletes, that's what keeps me up at night as an athletic director and being able to maintain what we're doing."
Yurachek said he initiated the media conference without an agenda, but he opened it by reading excerpts from an open letter he wrote in July and never made public. The letter came on the heels of a widespread narrative that major college athletics was fixated solely on potential revenue losses and had little concern over the student-athletes.
"Back in late July, when there was a lot of scrutiny whether or not we should play a fall sports season or athletic season in general, I got really frustrated with the narrative about why we were playing the season or at least attempting to play a season," Yurachek said. "So in my frustration I wrote an open letter I ended up not sending out. But I think it was very therapeutic for me and I want to take some excerpts from that and read that to you right now."
Yurachek said the letter explained his "why" as an athletic director.
"Right now at the University of Arkansas we have 325 student-athletes on campus representing 19 different sports, returning voluntarily to work on their passion," Yurachek read. "They came back to do what they love. To lift weights, run, shoot, pass, hit, dribble, pitch, serve, volley, drive, dive and swim.
"They came back to enjoy the camaraderie of being surrounded by their fellow teammates during one of the most special times of their lives. Student-athletes are making incredible sacrifices to provide themselves the best opportunity to have a season.
"As such, I will continue to work tirelessly to find a way that includes the safety, health and well-being of our student-athletes, staff and fans, to play college athletics this year at the University of Arkansas. Sure there are financial ramifications to such decisions that will play an integral role in our ability to continue to support our student-athletes at the level we have been able to in the past. However, this season, as is the case for every season, my 'why' continues to be the same: Our incredible student-athletes."
