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How Arkansas is using its 8 hours of virtual meetings each week

Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman
Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman (Arkansas Athletics)

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FAYETTEVILLE — After more than two months of being in a coronavirus-induced shutdown, Arkansas has its virtual meetings down to a science.

Head coach Sam Pittman and his staff originally used their allotted time to implement new offensive and defensive schemes, but have now scaled back and aren’t using all eight hours allowed by the NCAA each week.

The primary focus recently has been on the freshmen, who won’t report to campus until June 29 - three weeks after the returning players.

“We’re having separate meetings, basically, with our young guys,” Pittman said. “We’re starting from the beginning with them, trying to teach them the playbook and basically trying to get to know those guys a little bit on Zoom.”

Older players have seen their individual time with position coaches decrease to just one hour each week, with 30-minute meetings on Monday and Wednesday.

The Razorbacks are also still conducting team meetings four days a week - five for freshmen - as well as a special teams meeting.

Those time constraints don’t apply to the weight room when voluntary workouts begin next Monday for returning players. With only 22 players currently taking summer classes, Pittman said the team will have workouts five days a week.

“I don’t have a whole lot of our guys in summer school at this point,” Pittman said. “They have a lot of time on their hands, so we’re trying to take up some of that void here.”

Even though they’ve already started arriving on campus in anticipation of those workouts, players will continue to meet with their coaches virtually in an effort to cut down in-person contact and prevent the spread of the virus.

It is unclear when normal meetings will resume, and what the new “normal” will look like. As athletics director Hunter Yurachek pointed out last week, there have been discussions about whether or not position groups will continue to meet in a room together during the season.

“What you don't want to have happen is the Friday before a game, your starting quarterback tests positive and because of his close contact with the second-string and the third-string and the fourth-string quarterback, you don't have a quarterback to put out there,” Yurachek said. “It’s changing the way our coaches in all of our sports think about how they meet and interact with student-athletes, even to a point where how they may practice moving forward."

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