Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said Monday night that he would be open to moving next season’s Arkansas vs. Memphis football game to Fayetteville if Memphis officials are interested.

“I’d be open to looking at both of our schedules and potentially doing a swap of the dates of the game,” Yurachek said before an appearance at the Memphis Touchdown Club. “If it worked better for them to have the game that was played in Memphis in future years when the stadium is done, I’d be willing to look at moving that game to Fayetteville next year.”

The game is set for Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium on Sept. 20, 2025. It’s part of a two-for-one deal where the Tigers will travel to Fayetteville for games in 2026 and 2028. But the stadium is in the midst of a $220 million renovation that isn’t scheduled to be completed until after the 2025 season.

That means the Arkansas-Memphis game is expected to take place at a limited-capacity stadium. This year’s capacity is 33,691, but that number could be higher by the time next season rolls around. Arkansas fans are expected to travel to the game, and there could be more demand than capacity.

“I just learned of that today,” Yurachek said. “It wasn’t on my mind that the stadium was under construction, that it’s still going to be under construction next season. That’s a two-for-one series, where there are two games in Fayetteville and one in Memphis, so that’s maybe an opportunity if there’s an interest for it to switch the dates of those games and play this game next year in Fayetteville and give Memphis the opportunity to host a game in a future year when their stadium is done.”

Still, Yurachek said he has not yet had any discussions with Memphis officials about the potential to move the game. Memphis has a new AD in Ed Scott, and while Yurachek said he knows Scott, they have not talked since Scott arrived in Memphis.

“I just think regional games are a big deal and should be scheduled, and just make financial sense for both schools,” Yurachek said.

Memphis-Arkansas basketball game up to coaches

Memphis has long wanted to schedule men’s basketball games with Arkansas. The programs met last season in the Battle 4 Atlantis, but that was their first matchup in 20 years.

Memphis coach Penny Hardaway said in April that he was hopeful a regular-season game would happen, especially now that former Memphis coach John Calipari is at Arkansas. Yurachek said he leaves basketball scheduling up to the coaches, but said it would be a “great game.”

“Coach Cal handles his schedule, and I’m sure Coach Hardaway does as well,” Yurachek said. “I think that’d be a great game, and obviously there’s a tie-in with Coach Cal having been here at Memphis. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that game on the schedule in future years, but I’ve had no conversation with anybody at Memphis about that. That’s really Coach Cal’s deal.”

Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on X @thejonahdylan

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KAIT) – The Harlem Globetrotters’ World Tour will make a stop in Arkansas.

The world-famous basketball team will take on the Washington Generals at 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 25, at Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Monday, Sept. 30, and range in price from $32 to $117. There is an 8-ticket limit per household. Groups of 10 or more should email group sales at mstonecipher@simonsbankarena.com

Patrons can access presale tickets from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday, Sept. 23. The password is VENUE.

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The speaker of Wisconsin’s house of representatives clearly has a well-heeled opponent in Arkansas.

Spoiler alert: It’s real estate titan John Bailey of Little Rock.

Robin Vos has been speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, which is what the Badger State calls its house of representatives, since 2013. He represents a district in southeast Wisconsin, south of Milwaukee.

While Vos is a Republican, he isn’t Republican enough for some folks. Twice this year he has been the target of recall attempts because he rejected calls to decertify President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state by a mere 21,000 votes. According to the Associated Press, he further alienated himself from some in his party by declining to endorse an effort to impeach the state’s top election official. 

Both recalls failed because they didn’t get enough valid signatures from Vos’ district as it is currently configured. That doesn’t seem to be because they didn’t have enough money: The two efforts combined reported donations of almost $1.28 million — about $185 for every one of the 6,850 voter signatures that either petition drive needed in order to get the recall on the November ballot. 

What may have been lacking was local buy-in. When the two organizations behind the recall attempts finally filed their financial statements — a month late — at the end of August, it turned out that less than $2,500 came from Wisconsin donors while more than $1.2 million came from Bailey. 

Identified in the paperwork as a philanthropist from Little Rock, we know Bailey as a major shareholder and former CEO of publicly traded BSR Real Estate Investment Trust. BSR owns multifamily residential properties, mostly in Texas but also in Oklahoma City and Little Rock. BSR’s headquarters at 1400 W. Markham St. was listed as the donor’s address.

“This makes it clear this wasn’t a grassroots, volunteer, local effort,” Vos was quoted by The Journal Times in Racine. “It was an out-of-state paid endeavor engineered to pay those who took part in it.” 

Vos was nominated for re-election in the Republican primary last month, getting almost 70% of the vote after his only challenger unofficially withdrew.

It is not clear what would prompt Bailey to invest so much into ousting the Wisconsin speaker — $425,000 to the first recall effort (after an additional $60,000 was returned to him when that effort fizzled) and $785,000 to the second.

Whispers reached out to BSR with no success, and no reporters in Wisconsin seem to have answered the why either.

Bailey isn’t the only Arkansan involved in the efforts to recall Vos. Conrad Reynolds, the retired U.S. Army colonel who has twice sought the Republican nomination for Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District, worked with both Wisconsin recall committees. 

Reynolds and Bailey were both listed as officers of Restore Election Integrity Arkansas, which abandoned its planned petition initiative to get a paper ballot amendment on this year’s General Election ballot.

Reynolds told Whispers he knew that Bailey was interested in Wisconsin because “it was important to the mission to get their elections right,” but he said he could not speak to Bailey’s motive for donating so much to the Vos recall attempts. Reynold said he had not personally solicited donations to that effort from Bailey or anyone else.