One of the guest speakers during the Arkansas Trucking Association’s conference May 9 in Rogers was Hunter Yurachek, the athletic director at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Yurachek told stories to the audience about hiring former Kentucky coach John Calipari to lead the Razorbacks basketball team and bringing back Bobby Petrino as an offensive assistant for the football team. Prodded by former UA basketball player and lobbyist Blake Eddins, Yurachek spoke about Arkansas Edge, the university’s name image and likeness collective.
The UA is trying to sign up 5,000 donors — at $100 a month — before the start of the football season. The ultimate goal is 10,000 subscribers.
Yurachek said he wasn’t a fan of NIL collectives, which evolved after student-athletes were given the right to make money off their name, image and likeness in 2021. Yurachek agreed with the initial NIL concept, where athletes worked to get advertising deals.
“As we often do in college athletics we are our own worst enemy and somebody finds the loophole in something good,” Yurachek said.
“These things called collectives were born, and collectives are groups of donors that came together to pool their resources to induce players to either come to their school or remain at their school. For very little work.”
The athletic director said if the UA could raise $12 million from its collective — i.e., sign up 10,000 donors — then it would be in an “incredible spot” but still in the middle or bottom tier in the SEC.
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