Yurachek discusses financial impact of pandemic

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FAYETTEVILLE — The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has understandably taken a financial hit on college athletics.

With sports being put on hold last spring, returning with limited capacity this fall and the overall economic struggles throughout the country, athletic departments everywhere have been forced to tighten their budgets.

At Arkansas, athletics director Hunter Yurachek said they anticipated a revenue deficit between $20-25 million, but that has grown to the $25-30 million range since the end of football season.

“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,” Yurachek said. “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.”

Even coming off a season with historically low attendance, the Razorbacks saw a dramatic decrease in that area in 2020. With only five home games and capacity set at 16,500, Arkansas sold 76.9 percent fewer tickets than the year before.

However, it could have been worse. Speaking to the media on a Zoom videoconference Thursday, Yurachek said COVID-19 test results kept him up at night throughout the football season and still do.

“There was a significant value any time we would have lost an SEC football game, from a television revenue standpoint,” Yurachek said. “We’re already hemorrhaging a great deal of revenue right now. We didn’t want to lose more revenue.”

Luckily for the Razorbacks, Yurachek had already planned for “financial hardships” - albeit ones that pale in comparison to those created by the pandemic.

About four months before sports shut down, he made the decision to fire Chad Morris, which came with a price tag of about $10.1 million. A few of Morris’ assistants, like defensive coordinator John Chavis, also had buyouts.

Yurachek knew that his new coach, who proved to be Sam Pittman, would need resources to succeed, so he got to work securing that financial help.

“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.”

Raises to defensive coordinator Barry Odom and other assistants - details of which he didn’t reveal - this offseason have come out of that separate fund and not the football program’s operational budget.

That will also help Arkansas meet the challenge of funding the scholarships of the 10 football seniors taking advantage of the NCAA’s eligibility relief by returning for an extra season. Instead of the usual 85-man limit, the Razorbacks could have as many as 95 players on scholarship in 2021.

Elsewhere in the department, Yurachek said the J.B. Hunt Baseball Development Center is still on schedule - with the loge boxes set to be ready for the Feb. 25 home opener and the rest of the facility set to open sometime in April - and the Frank O’Mara Track & Field High Performance Center on track to open in April. The major renovations to the Tyson Indoor Track facility have already debuted.

Despite the financial strains related to the pandemic, he said he doesn’t anticipate the arms race of facilities slowing down across the conference.

“I don't see there being less ambitious plans within in the SEC,” Yurachek said. “This year has been a struggle for most of us financially, but…I don't think the ambitious nature of the SEC will go away because of COVID.”

Arkansas has avoided layoffs and terminations within the department up to this point, but everyone has taken a pay cut. There were also 16 staff members who took early retirement.

Those losses shouldn’t be glossed over, though, as Yurachek pointed out they had close to 500 combined years of service at Arkansas, which is a lot of “institutional knowledge.”

“You just can’t replace that,” Yurachek said. “We miss those people dearly around our department, their personality and their knowledge. But we’ve been able to forge ahead. People have stepped up and covered those duties that were left behind.”

Looking ahead, Yurachek is optimistic that things will slowly return to normal.

Attendance at Baum-Walker Stadium will be capped at 4,218 at the start of baseball season, but the Razorbacks are selling tickets to season ticket holders on a single-game basis so it’d be easier to increase capacity if the opportunity presents itself later in the year.

The football schedule will be released by the SEC sometime in the next week or so, as well, Yurachek said, and he is hopeful Reynolds Razorback Stadium will be full in 2021.

“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’re anticipating things returning to some sense of normalcy, that’s my crystal ball outlook of what I think right now.”