New Arkansas Razorbacks head football coach Chad Morris and Hunter Yurachek, vice chancellor and director of athletics, are careful to rarely mention their forebears, but their stated goals and critiques of the status quo reflect a number of deviations.
Former athletic director Jeff Long and football coach Bret Bielema were terminated in November with significant buyout agreements, a practice which Yurachek said he did not agree with Wednesday when he spoke to members of the Roy L. Murphy Razorback Club at the Lakeside Athletic Complex. Yurachek said he looked to see significant growth from Morris in his first season at Arkansas as the Razorbacks compete in the Southeastern Conference.
"I hesitate to put a number of wins versus a number of losses," Yurachek told The Sentinel-Record. "We are playing in the SEC and in the SEC West. And if you look at their schedule, it is pretty daunting year in and year out.
"What I want Razorback fans to see, and I think this is what coach Morris is going to put on the field and what his goal is to see, is a team that plays fast, they play with great enthusiasm, they play with great discipline and there is a product on the field that Razorback fans are going to be really proud to watch, cheer for and be a part of the program."
Yurachek did say during the Razorback Club rally he expected Morris to lead the Razorbacks to a bowl game in his first season.
Morris was originally scheduled to address the club on Wednesday, but NCAA recruiting regulations restricted him from attending because it was held on a high school campus. Yurachek said he has worked to hear from as many invested parties as possible during his first five months at Arkansas.
"As I travel around the state and I talk to folks, first and foremost, I can understand how passionate they are about their Razorbacks and how hungry they are for winners, especially for football, but for all of our sports programs to be successful," Yurachek said.
"If I had to rank the Arkansas Razorback fans, of all of the places I have been, they are at the top of the list, for sure."
Yurachek began his career as an unpaid intern at Wake Forest. His career included stops at Vanderbilt, Western Carolina, Virginia and Akron before he was the athletic director at Coastal Carolina.
Arkansas hired Yurachek from Houston and Morris from SMU in December. Both have attended a number of events throughout the state since they were hired.
"Everybody's got an opinion, one or the other," Yurachek said. "When you are winning, they love you and when you're not winning, maybe not as much, but I would rather have a passionate, engaged fan base over a dull, unengaged and uninvolved fan base.
"I love it. I think it is great and I understand the frustration. You've got people that save all year to buy their season tickets for football and travel to Fayetteville and they want to see that program be successful. When it is not as successful as they kind of envision it to be, I understand the frustration of our fans, and so does coach Morris. He understands how hungry this state is for a winner."
Long and Bielema were prominent figures, not only in the state of Arkansas, but in the larger college sports landscape. Long chaired the College Football Playoff Selection Committee in its first two years and Bielema was a common addition to football studio programs. Yurachek and Morris have shown a similar penchant for being open with their own opinions.
"So far, the enthusiasm has shown through," Yurachek said. "You are always going to have a few skeptics, kind of the wait and see crowd, but I think people are excited, reenergized and reinvigorated. Coach Morris is a big part of that, but I hope I have played a part in that."
Yurachek told members on Wednesday Morris inherited an "awful" team at SMU. The Mustangs improved from 1-11 in the season before Morris to 2-10, 5-7 and 7-5 in his three years at the helm.
Bielema was often criticized for losing high school prospects in the state to programs such as Alabama, Missouri and Oklahoma. Yurachek said all 10 full-time coaches on Morris' staff will recruit in-state prospects, compared to the one recruiter for all of Arkansas under Bielema.
"If there is a high school that opens a textbook up in this state, we are going to have someone with an Arkansas logo on their shirt recruiting there," Yurachek said. "We are not going to let the best players in this state go anywhere else but the University of Arkansas."
Yurachek said Arkansas has found the most success in the past by keeping the state's top prospects and complementing them with others from surrounding states.
"If you look back at the history of Arkansas football, in the times when we have been successful, we had the best players from Arkansas and complemented them with some great players from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana," Yurachek said. "We are going to have great success."
Yurachek was asked about potential changes in college basketball and he said he was in favor of eliminating the one-and-done rule. He said improvements must start with college administrators and coaches being expected to "operate with integrity."
"That is the only way it is going to change," Yurachek said. "We can point our finger at the NBA, we can point our finger at the NCAA, we can point our finger at the AAU programs, but you know what, if you will look yourself in the mirror and address the problems on your campus with the utmost integrity, that is going to solve a lot of problems we have in college basketball. Until we are willing to do that as an entity and on each of our own campuses, it is not going to happen."
Yurachek said he began with a 100-day plan to learn about Arkansas' programs and their needs. He said a new baseball clubhouse will be constructed and renovations will be completed at the Randal Tyson Track Center before it hosts the NCAA Indoor Championships in 2021. Renovations will be completed at the Blessings Golf Club ahead of the 2019 NCAA Men's and Women's Golf Championships next May.
The new athletic director praised the success the Razorbacks have had this year in track, gymnastics, softball, golf, baseball and men's basketball. Yurachek is quick to mention how eight of the nine spring sports teams are ranked 29th or better.
"You don't get to talk about them as much, but they are important to me as an athletic director," Yurachek said. "I always talk about how we have 19 sports programs at the University of Arkansas and we want 19 sports programs to be successful.
"To be successful means to have an opportunity to compete and win championships year in and year out. I don't like segmenting sports into non-revenue sports or Olympic sports. We've got 19 sports programs and we want each of them to be successful."
Sports on 04/29/2018