Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek
• It has been an incredibly challenging 72 hours for college sports. In the last hour, the SEC announced it is suspending athletic-related activities through April 15. No team practices, workouts, and that goes for individuals as well. We continue to provide academic services and services related to injuries. We need to do our part in college athletics to make sure his virus does not spread.
• I want to thank Greg Sankey for his incredible leadership during the last several days. He's been at the forefront of this. The SEC has made several decisions this week, and we have done it as a conference. These decisions are in the best interests of our student-athletes and all involved.
• On canceling events into June: I was disappointed in how those decisions were delivered. I would have liked to have had the chance to discuss those things with our coaches and athletes, and for them to not find out on social media. I'm not saying it was the incorrect decision, but I don't think that needed to be delivered yesterday.
• As far as our spring sports and those championships, I think it’s still very much up in the air on any decisions on how to proceed. I will tell you, I think it will be extremely challenging for our student-athletes and our coaches after taking a month off to quickly start a season back up again.
You’ve got to think just the timing of that, if we are able to start practicing again some time after April 15 how many weeks of preparation you need to get ready to start a season again. It’s going to be a challenge. Read into that what you will. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us, but that’s still up in the air.
• Contact with athletes, and morale: They are struggling. Not only here, but across the country, they are struggling, especially seniors. Some were expecting to compete for championships, and that has been taken away from them. I don't think it has sunken in yet for many of our athletes.
• We had a coaches meeting at lunch. I think coaches understand what we are going through as a country right now. They are understanding and disappointed as well. They know how hard these kids have trained, and now they don't have a chance to compete.
• Eligibility concerns: There is a lot that goes into that. It is not just about gaining eligibility for seniors. Athletes in other classes are included, and there are scholarship limits. It is not as simple as just saying everyone gets their year back.
• On what he will be doing in the days/weeks to come: I'm going to get ready for the 2021 season soon and we are prepping for the fall in terms of marketing, etc. Not seeing these athletes compete will leave a big void for me, as it will for many in this room.
• We are looking into compensating stadium workers/staff. Obviously there’s tremendous financial implications for us, from a budgetary standpoint. We’re not worried about necessarily the finances, but we are going to try to take care of as many people like that. Our Landmark people have been very, very good to us and how hard they work and I know they’re dependent, some of them as their primary source of income, for that revenue, so we’re going to work with Landmark to see how we can support them.
• Coaches with potential postseason bonuses: Specifically, I’ll address Mike Neighbors. I think it was very evident to all of us that our women’s basketball team would receive a bid to the NCAA Tournament, so Neighbors and his staff that was eligible for bonuses, we’ll proceed with those. Then we’ll address the others on a case-by-case basis.
• We have some info in place where we will provide refunds for everything through April 15 in terms of tickets.
• Coach Sam Pittman and I have had discussions. We will apply for some legislative relief to try to get our spring practices in at some point, maybe in May or June.
• We're looking into financial ramifications. There will also be some expense saving. We won't be using hotel rooms, food, etc. There will be some losses in revenue we will have to address. We have done a good job building reserves for a rainy day, and this is certainly a rainy day.
• What do you draw upon in handling a situation like this? Yurachek: I think what I’ve drawn upon is our senior staff and our head coaches around the country - just basic common sense. Really taking a step back and understanding that as much as we want this to be about sports that right now, it’s not about sports. That’s not what is important. It’s about everybody in this room, our student-athletes, our staff and making sure that we try to minimize the spread of the coronavirus as much as we can by eliminating these large gatherings and things that we’ve been advised to do.
• Think we've seen the last game played for the last 5-6 months? I think it will be really tough for athletes to be away for a month then get really geared back up. You have to start thinking about this from the student-athletes' perspective.
• Projects on campus related to sports: That would be a great question to ask the construction companies. I hope they are not stopping. I hope they're still working on those projects. Those are university projects, but we have outside general contractors that are building those facilities. I'd hope they would continue, but I think it is inevitable that there will probably be an interruption in those projects as they protect the welfare and health of their workers as well.