Turns Out Yurachek was Right

Thought, reflection reveals it was time to shuffle Bud Walton, offer new opportunity

Arkansas Razorbacks athletics director Hunter Yurachek calling the Hogs at a basketball game against Texas A&M. / Craven Whitlow-Hogs on SI Images

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — This might ruffle some feathers, but after a lot of thought and trying on a lot of different people's shoes, the conclusion has been reached that Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek is right to shuffle things around at Bud Walton Arena.

There were a lot of photos of chairs with sentimental notes on them after the Hogs' final regular season home game with posts acting as if someone burst into these people's houses, snatched their puppy and went out in the front yard and killed it, but that's not what happened. People are just potentially sitting in another seat based on how things shake out and must pay market price to do so like everyone else.

Yurachek has been called a lot of things in their rage, none of which has been very Christian. It's a necessary move considering the changing climate of college athletics and the anger is boiling over because of a failure to see the situation from someone else's perspective.

Let's take little James Gasaway (not a real person). He's turning 10 years old when Bud Walton originally opens and as he blows out his birthday candles, he makes a wish.

"I want to go see Coach Richardson and the Razorbacks and I want to sit third row center with Daddy so when coach yells at the referee, we can hear what he's saying," James says.

Well, that just moves his father's heart and he picks up extra shifts to save up for what he figures is probably going to be very expensive tickets and he wants to make sure there's a little extra money to buy a shirt or hat to remember the trip. However, when he finally saves up the cash, he calls up the ticket office to request his son's seat and is told "Oh, that's Jim and Betty's seat. They're season ticket holders. You'll have to hope they don't renew one day if you want to sit there."

James' father passes away unexpectedly eight years later, so the young man never gets to experience his wish. He then goes to the University of Arkansas because he's too much of a fan to go anywhere else and meets a girl who is also a huge fan and falls in love.

They get married and want nothing more than to come home from their honeymoon with the perfect ending of a Saturday Hogs basketball game third row center. Just like his father, James saves up the extra money, contacts the ticket office and receives the bad news.

"Oh, you can't sit there. That's Jim and Betty's seat. Has been for a decade now. They're season ticket holders. You'll have to hope they don't renew one day if you want to sit there."

Ten years later, he's watching a Razorback game and notices that for the third game in a row, those seats on the center of the third row have been empty. He glances at his daughter who will soon turn 10 and remembers how special it would have been to him if he had been able to sit there with his dad just once before he died.

"Clearly Jim and Betty don't have the seats anymore," James thought. "I'm gonna call and try to get them so I can have this moment with my little girl before it's too late."

So James calls up the ticket office to see if those tickets are available. To his suprise, they aren't.

"Oh, you can't sit there. That's Jim and Betty's seat. Has been for two decades now."

"But, I see the games on TV and no one is sitting there," James says. "Why would they buy season tickets and not use them?"

"Oh, they only show up for the big games now like Kentucky, Florida and Tennessee."

"Are you serious?" James says. "That makes no sense. Do you think they would sell me the seats for a game? Could you reach out to them? I'd pay double what they're worth."

"They'd never do that. Betty would never stand for a stranger's backside touching her seat. You'll have to hope they don't renew one day if you want to sit there."

So a third decade passes. James watches with disgust as the seats go unused and when they are in use, the couple sitting there never stands up and barely claps. The spirit of Barnhill that was carried over in a crystal bowl by Nolan Richardson has faded with the lifeless support of Jim and Betty.

When 2025 rolls around, James is sitting with his granddaughter and notices the seats go unused all season except for the Texas game. In fact, much of the arena, but especially the season ticket holder section, is empty, and when it's not, it's essentially lifeless compared to the glory days.

"If I could just sit there and bring my granddaughter or my wife we'd be so loud," James thinks. "All those people around us would tell us to sit down and stop yelling, but we'd make sure the team could hear us and those grumpy people could just get over it. I feel awful when I find myself wishing Jim and Betty would just die already. Although, their children would probably get the seats and hardly use them either."

A few weeks later, while scrolling through Twitter, enjoying the high of a win over Mississippi St. in a living room that was much more raucous than Bud Walton, James is scrolling through his phone when he immediately stops. There is a picture of Jim and Betty's seats with printer paper signs on them complaining that they're going to have to move seats after over three decades.

A smile spreads across James' face as he checks his bank account. The one thing about saving all those years hoping Jim and Betty might finally give up is he has enough to make the dream come true.

With the randomness of it all he doesn't know for sure if he can get the seats where he wants them, but for once in his life there truly is a chance to live the dream he had so long ago when it had been absolutely denied.

Jim and Betty might end up right back in those same seats. One fair way to do it is to go back over the past five years and see how often their tickets were actually scanned.

If Jim and Betty showed up 90% of the time, even though they might be killing the vibe of Bud Walton Arena and making the place look miserable to recruits who are watching on TV, they deserve to stay where they are. However, if they only show up for certain SEC games or skip the ones midweek, then shuffle them up higher and find some new blood to put in those prime, hard camera seats.

Give the James' of the world a chance to feel what it's like to be down there and actually act like they're not bored with 30+ years of the same view while talking about politics with the same 12 people who have sat around them for 30+ years. It's not right to deny generations of Razorbacks fans a special experience just because a family was fortunate enough to buy season tickets back when Bud Walton nearly tripled basketball capacity and Fayetteville was not only tiny, but hard to get to back in the early '90s.

The Jim and Bettys have lived their dream. It's time for others to have that opportunity.

Bud Walton has been embarrassing the past several years. Watch a few minutes of a game this year and then pause during a commercial and pull up video from when it first opened. One is a rock concert on steroids and the other feels like a college political science class.

How Calipari is going to keep luring guys like Darius Acuff and Maleek Thomas with the crowd as it is should be enough for people to get on board. If the atmosphere is going to be what it's been lately, it's going to take every dime of the extra money raised through new seat prices to get them to Fayetteville.

Had season ticket holders held the standard and also shared their unused seats more often with die-hard families just wanting a magical experience, things might be different. Had the university chosen to slowly raise prices to reflect true market value along the way, things might have gone more smoothly.

However, there are a lot of people who are happy to see the Band-Aid get ripped off and things get shuffled around a bit. The hope is the seats won't go to corporations that do nothing with them, but it's not like the atmosphere could feel worse or look as bad on TV as it did this year.

In a perfect world, those corporations will give them to employees who really want to go or use them as incentives during charity work such as school reading programs. Maybe the next James Gasaway who has a dream to sit third row center with his dad can plow through half the school library and earn it with pride.

As things currently are, people couldn't even be bothered to show up to Calipari's first game to welcome him and the new roster. It was sad and there were so many James' at home angry because they knew they would have gone if they could have.

Sorry people are losing seats that have come to be perfectly shaped to their backsides after 30+ years of wear, but it's time to go sit somewhere else. James and his granddaughter need a place to sit.

His dreams shouldn't die just because someone in Jim and Betty's family is still alive.

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