FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The jersey was just a prop, something for Ryan Silverfield to hold up at his news conference: His name and the No. 35, because he’s the 35th Arkansas football coach. It could’ve been tossed aside and forgotten.

Silverfield framed it. He hung it in his office, a reminder of the challenge he’s been given.

He knew Arkansas was a program at a crossroads — in football and in finances. And Silverfield knew that he’s the 35th Arkansas football coach — and 10th since 1992 — because this place has eaten up so many others.

“You think about it: Ken Hatfield, who won here, was run out. Houston Nutt, who won here, was run out,” Silverfield said, referencing two coaches who left for other jobs amid issues with administrators or fans. “If we’re going to get serious about football, it’s going to take a lot of people understanding that this is what it takes.”

They wanted to run Silverfield out before he was even hired. Well, a small group of unhappy Hogs fans held a short-lived demonstration on campus, though they staged their protest at the wrong building. Silverfield’s introductory news conference went off anyway, and then he spent the next nine months doing what he believes needs to be done for Arkansas to compete in this era.

Get the money.

This is the new reality for a first-year coach of an SEC team trying to punch its way up in 2026: Silverfield, recognizing that Arkansas was financially behind rival programs, estimated he spent 75 percent of his offseason time on fundraising efforts.

Silverfield, who spent the last six seasons as Memphis’ head coach, may have been an underwhelming hire in the eyes of some fans. But he could also prove to be exactly what Arkansas needs: A natural fundraiser and blunt-talking realist who knows his job is to get Arkansas back to relevance, or get left behind, perhaps permanently.

“Every single day, that’s my job,” Silverfield said. “That’s why if I sit there and say, ‘This is what we’ve always done here,’ they’ll be on their 36th coach sooner than we want to be.”

Ryan Silverfield sits with athletic director Hunter Yurachek at his introductory news conference last December. (Nelson Chenault / Imagn Images via Reuters Connect)

Playing catch-up in a new era

Arkansas was a charter member of the Southwest Conference, where the Razorbacks won 14 conference titles and routinely went to major bowl games under Frank Broyles, Lou Holtz and Hatfield. Many Razorback fans rue the demise of the Southwest Conference and wonder if their program would do better in the Big 12, but even after joining the SEC, there were good years under Nutt, Bobby Petrino and Bret Bielema.

But since Petrino’s motorcycle escapade got him fired before the 2012 season, Arkansas has gone 0-8 in SEC play four times with only six winning seasons. Since 2017, its overall record (40-69) and SEC record (15-59) are both the worst in the conference.

“All of the former glory of Razorback football in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, some good times here and there, has largely been erased in the minds of most people,” Trey Biddy, an analyst at HawgSports, decreed recently.

The era of paying players has not helped. One state over, Ole Miss got the Grove Collective going and capitalized, its investments culminating in a College Football Playoff semifinal run. Arkansas, however, was slower into the collective game and had trouble attracting and signing players. That stalled the momentum of Silverfield’s predecessor, Sam Pittman, who won nine games in 2021 but was fired after a 2-3 start to last season.

“In fairness, we got a little bit behind the 8 ball,” said Merritt Dyke, a Razorback Foundation board member and CEO of Dyke Industries, a millwork distributor. “We’ve got to figure out how to raise money, but we’ve got to figure out — the athletic department’s got to figure out creative ways to create the opportunity to raise money.”

There are, of course, hurdles: Arkansas is the second-smallest state by population in the SEC, after Mississippi. And although Walmart and Tyson Foods are based in Arkansas, it’s still the fourth-poorest state in the nation by median household income.

“We have per capita, I think, the greatest depth of billionaires of any state in the country, but per capita, we have kind of the shallowest pool of millionaires,” said athletic director Hunter Yurachek, now in his ninth year at Arkansas. “And so we have so many incredible donors, but this football piece, this NIL piece, it just exploded. And anybody that said they were well prepared for it, I think would be fooling you.”

Arkansas’ financial position came into focus this spring when the school announced it would shut down the men’s and women’s tennis programs. It reversed course 20 days later, after Yurachek said donors had stepped up.

And while most — if not all other — SEC athletic departments shrugged off the $20.5 million in revenue sharing this past year that could now go to players, Arkansas had to adjust: It raised $10 million by re-seating the basketball arena, and it saved $10 million by eliminating 15 jobs, not filling other positions, freezing raises and cutting travel expenses.

And yet, if the athletic department had a hard cap of around $50 million — as the Protect College Sports Act would do — Yurachek said that would be doable. Arkansas also increased its football coaching salary pool: Pittman was dealing with the second-lowest in the SEC, Yurachek said, while Silverfield was bumped up to “middle of the pack,” which the AD thinks should give his coach “a fighting chance” for College Football Playoff contention, especially if the Playoff expands to 16 or 24 teams.

“Right now, my focus, our department’s focus, is all in on football,” Yurachek said. “This is a key period of time for us in our football program.”

Chasing donors, big and small

The day before preseason practice began, Silverfield stood in a tunnel just outside the field. A visitor pointed to the Walmart logo, prominently painted on a concourse wall. How did Oregon become Oregon, the visitor asked rhetorically.

“A thousand percent,” Silverfield said. “When Dan Lanning took that job, it wasn’t the same as it is 500 days later, when NIL became a thing. It went from a top-25 job to a top-five job real quick.”

But while Nike made Oregon a top-five job, the prospect of Walmart doing the same for Arkansas has yet to be unlocked. The Walton family has been generous with its support in Fayetteville: hundreds of millions to the university for various projects, in addition to bike paths and other community projects. Walmart as a company is the No. 2 athletic sponsor at nearly $2 million annually, and the name of the basketball arena is Bud Walton Arena. The Walton family is the third-highest donor to the Razorback Foundation, the fundraising arm for all sports.

Tyson Foods, the other local behemoth, has shown more direct interest in football, and is Arkansas’ jersey patch sponsor. Silverfield has worked hard to establish relationships and get donations from many others, with some checks already written.

Walmart remains the Holy Grail. The program just can’t sit around waiting for it.

That 75 percent of Silverfield’s offseason spent fundraising? Sometimes, that was people being brought directly to his office. Sometimes, he traversed the state. He had dinner at the governor’s mansion.

Ryan Silverfield poses for a photo with a fan at an Arkansas-Kentucky men’s basketball game in January. (Nelson Chenault / Imagn Images via Reuters Connect)

The result: Arkansas says $25 million has already been raised for its Razorback Foundation, directly for football, and the program raised its annual goal from $30 million to $50 million. Silverfield said his player pool will increase in 2027.

But this year’s team came with a set budget, which was lower. (He won’t say how low.)

“I said we need to increase this, so I put on my fundraising hat and spent a lot of the last eight months doing so,” Silverfield said. “In order for us to compete in the SEC, there’s a certain amount we need to get to financially to give yourself a chance. I think at some point, most people realized that around here, that we weren’t where we needed to be.

“Listen, I give most people credit that they fight the good fight, to try to get better. But I can’t sit here and allow other people to do it. It’s my job as the head coach and the CEO to do that as well.”

One willing donor has been Jordan Wright, founder and CEO of Wright’s Barbecue, a growing chain in the state. Wright is a lifelong Razorbacks fan and believer in Silverfield, but thinks the big support will only come if the new coach generates wins.

“If you think about Indiana, Curt Cignetti didn’t come in with huge fanfare” ‘Oh my gosh, they hired the guy that’s going to win a national championship in two years,’” Wright said. “But he recruited and built the right team, played their ass off, and then the (Mark) Cubans of the world were like, ‘We want to be a part of this.’”

If that means victories, it may be hard to impress donors right away. Arkansas was picked 14th in the SEC in the preseason media poll, has a tough schedule and 80 new players, including a new quarterback.

But donors — and Silverfield’s boss — said that people should be looking for other things: fundamentals, attention to detail, discipline.

“You’ve got to be better in all those intangible areas because we may not have the same money we can spend for talent acquisition and things of that nature,” Yurachek said. “So, we have to do other things differently that help us win games.”

Can Arkansas evolve?

Arkansas is winning in other sports: The men’s basketball team made the Sweet 16 last season in its second year under John Calipari. The school has won 43 different SEC championships in a dozen other sports over the last eight years, and 10 national championships.

Football, of course, is a different animal, and could determine Arkansas’ place in the next era of college sports. That responsibility now falls to Silverfield, who went 50-25 at Memphis — including a win over Arkansas last year. But he never won a conference championship, and many Razorbacks fans wanted Jon Sumrall (who took the job at Florida), Alex Golesh (who took Auburn) or Arkansas alumnus Rhett Lashlee (who stayed at SMU).

Silverfield knew the criticism was there. He has won over donors like Wright and Dyke. But most of his work has been behind the scenes: Having stairwells at the facility repainted with the team logo, replacing dumbbells in the weight room, and all those fundraising efforts.

The job of head college football coach is so much less about football these days.

“More so than ever. And probably here more than most places,” Silverfield said.

At most jobs, he said, the head coach is either really good at Xs and Os or recruiting. This job has required both of those — in the 25 percent of his time when he’s working to raise money.

“And that’s OK,” he added. “I hope five years from now we’re not saying that I’m spending 75 percent of my time fundraising. I hope I’m spending 95 percent of my time with my current players on my roster and helping this program in other ways. But we’re not there yet.”