Arkansas' Football Review Has to Be the Turning Point for Razorbacks

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas coach Ryan Silverfield appears confident that the review for a plan being put into place to add resources to the football team is coming along just fine.

That has to be reassuring to some, but one has to think that he's at least able to provide some type of influence when it comes to what that plan might look like.

"It puts a big smile on my face, because that's huge news for our fans, it's huge news for our football program. Obviously, we're excited on focusing up and doing well the rest of this season, but again, everybody keeps saying, 'Coach, you're so optimistic.' Well, there's a plan in place, and guess what? It's going to be implemented."

Simply put, it's no secret around these parts or even in the SEC that Arkansas is struggling to remain afloat in terms of fielding a competitive football program.

So much for Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek wanting to see what the "dark side" of NIL by allowing Arkansas to venture into that third lane.

"Until we get our [college athletics NIL] enforcement agency up and running, you're going to continue to have schools operating in that third lane and that's a bad place to be in my opinion," Yurachek said at the Little Rock Touchdown Club last September.

"It's bad for college athletics. I don't want to operate there, but to be competitive, we may have to figure out what that third lane looks like for the University of Arkansas."

For Yurachek, it's been over 14 months since that infamous day in Central Arkansas. He's fired a coach since then, said he wouldn't take the football program for granted again, and mentioned the Razorbacks would be immediately competitive due to a financial pledge in place that would put them in the top half of SEC in terms of spending.

If that's the case, every other SEC program must've been so terrified of Arkansas becoming competitive again that they decided to raise even more money just to keep the Razorbacks behind.

Either that, or the financial picture presented to Silverfield wasn't nearly as promising as everyone was led to believe.

After a humiliating 43-10 loss at Utah, the University of Arkansas system board of trustees announced a plan to evaluate what it'll take to help get Razorback football off the ground.

This plan is either going to be so comprehensive that they find holes in previous budgets that shouldn't have been there, or they'll opt to funnel more cash to the $15 million resolution to reallocate funds that was previously announced back in January.

Whatever comes out of the review, it needs to be more than just another promise that Arkansas is going to do everything it can to compete in the SEC. This has to be the deal that gets the program over the hump in competitiveness.

Silverfield has already shown he's capable of getting his players to buy in, even when things haven't gone according to plan — just look at the last couple of games for reference. The Razorbacks could've packed it in after an embarrassing start to the season, but instead they've continued fighting and finally snapped a 14-game SEC losing streak with a victory at Vanderbilt.

While progress has been shown, the gap between Arkansas and its competition comes down to resources available to acquire the talent that helps them catch up. If the board has truly put the time in to get this whole thing back on track then it'll be a huge victory for Silverfield moving foraward.

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