FAYETTEVILLE — Some propose under these coronavirus covid-19 pandemic circumstances that sports, especially football and men’s basketball for TV, still could be played minus fans.
Don’t count University of Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek among those proposing or even remotely concurring with that point of view.
Yurachek plans on new Razorbacks Coach Sam Pittman’s football team practicing in the August preseason for its Sept. 5 season-opener at Reynolds Razorback Stadium against the University of Nevada.
However if it’s just a made for TV show with no fans in the stands and no students on campus, Yurachek vows the games not be played.
Same for basketball if the pandemic’s impact hasn’t significantly waned by late fall into the winter.
“Somebody,” Yurachek said, “is going to have to do a great, big selling job on myself and my colleagues across college athletics that if it’s not safe enough for fans to be in the stands, how is it safe enough for our student-athletes to be on the field?”
Football defies social distancing.
“On a football field you are lined on the line of scrimmage less than a foot away from coming together,” Yurachek said. “There’s an exchange of sweat. There’s spit flying. And you look at men’s basketball, to put our student-athletes out there against opposing student-athletes…”
All college sports and nearly all professional sports worldwide ceased their games since mid March when the deadly pandemic hit home in the United States. It makes most housebound and urged to stay that way. Including college students. From this spring semester’s remainder through the summer sessions most are strictly online students now.
Campus classrooms closed completely.
Both for the Razorbacks and UA’s economic health and for raising the State of Arkansas’ and players’ morale having the Razorbacks playing again, Yurachek craves football and the other fall sports and basketball and the other conducted late fall through winter sports and 2021 spring sports all starting on time.
But not with players and staff literally dying to call the Hogs.
“Our plan is to start football and get our kids back when the medical health professionals tell us it’s safe,” Yurachek said answering questions during a Thursday interview. “This has been a very fluid situation for the last five weeks. Obviously things could change. That’s what we are planning for.”
But if the UA still is strictly an online university come August, Yurachek sees no cause for the Razorbacks to hit that line.
“I think that’s hard for us as a department of athletics as a part of the university to say ‘It’s not safe for our students to come back but it’s somehow safe for our student-athletes to come back,” Yurachek said. “That’s the same scenario about playing without fans. I don’t see a scenario where there’s a fall semester with no students on campus and we have a fall semester where our student-athletes are on campus. I don’t see where that happens at the University of Arkansas or any institution throughout the country.”