FAYETTEVILLE – Even Rakeem Boyd’s mother couldn’t get him to go out.
“My mama come in town and tryna drag me out the house … not going,” Boyd posted on his Twitter account Sunday.
Boyd, the University of Arkansas senior running back who has rushed for 1,857 yards combined in the previous two seasons, said he and his teammates are serious about following the safety protocols put in place to protect the Razorbacks’ players, coaches and staff members as the SEC pushes ahead to try to have fall sports during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Basically, it’s watch who you hang out with,” Boyd said on Monday on a Zoom call with coach Sam Pittman and junior linebacker Bumper Pool. “Wear your mask when you’re going out in public and you’re going out to eat.
“Around in the training room, the football staff has been great. [Managers] hand us water bottles. When somebody makes a good play, we give them elbows.”
Pittman said he’s confident the Razorbacks can prevent the spread of the virus within the team even with fall semester classes scheduled Monday and students back on campus.
“Obviously, [students are] coming on campus, but they’ve been on campus now for about a week and a day or so,” Pittman said. “They move in earlier and earlier nowadays. We used to move in like the day before school, but it’s not that way any more.
“Just because the kids are back doesn’t mean it was a ghost town here in Fayetteville before they came back. A lot of it is just talking to [players] about how important the season is to them, how the COVID is very, very scary and very, very harmful.”
Pittman said he’s done his part to social distance even while coaching the players.
“I told them the other day that I could not imagine, if I got the virus, who I would have to quarantine,” he said. “If you look at it that way, the person I’d have to quarantine is my wife, Jamie. But other than that, I haven’t been 6-foot close to somebody without a mask on for over 15 minutes in a long time.
“I think if you look at it that way as a player, and you go, ‘OK, they’re going to call you and say you have the virus, who are you going to have to quarantine?’
“If the answer is nobody, then you’re probably doing a pretty good job of it. That’s kind of how we had to explain it to our kids.”
Pittman said he knows students, including his players, want to socialize with each other, but the Razorbacks realize a positive test for COVID-19 means a 14-day quarantine and possibly missing games.
“There’s going to be, obviously, hard decisions they’re going to have to make when the campus gets full,” Pittman said. “We just hope they make the right ones. We trust that they will.”
Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek said the UA is making a significant financial commitment regarding safety measures.
“I would say that we’re well north of six figures in everything we’ve done since our student-athletes returned to protect them and our staff,” Yurachek last week on ESPN radio. “Right now we’re testing each of our student-athletes in our fall sports on a weekly basis. That comes with a cost.
“The protective equipment and how we set up our facilities and what we’re doing as far as practice goes, all that comes with a cost.
“But I said from the beginning we’ll spend whatever we need to spend at the University of Arkansas to make sure that the safety, health and well-being of our student-athletes and our staff are at the forefront, and we have done that so far.”
Yurachek said Aug. 10 on the “Paul Finebaum Show” that the Razorbacks had zero active cases of COVID-19 and no players were currently in quarantine on campus.
An Arkansas spokesman said Wednesday that remains the case.
“You have so many people that count on you doing these things,” Pool said. “Wearing your mask and staying away from people who aren’t in your inner circle. You feel that responsibility. We all want to have a season, so we have to make sacrifices now and that’s what we’re going to do.
“We already had our adjustment early on this summer of having to go through all the precautions and everything, so now we’re kind of on cruise control with it.”
Pool said the Razorbacks won’t change their approach with students back on campus.
“We’ve put in so much work just to give it away and contaminate our whole team getting it from people not in our circle,” he said.
Yurachek said the athletic department can create a safety bubble for the Razorbacks in all sports by having the majority of them take classes remotely, an option for UA students who aren’t athletes.
There will be a blend of classes in the fall semester being offered in-person and remotely, with expanded schedules for in-person classes to allow for smaller sizes and social distancing.
“I’m not a medical professional,” Yurachek said on the “Finebaum Show.” “I like to say I’m an AD, not an MD, and I lean heavily on our medical team here at the University of Arkansas as well as our SEC medical task force. I believe they’ve met and put together a really good plan for our student-athletes.
“A plan that we’ve technically been implementing since June the 8th [when some athletes returned to campus for workouts].”
Pool said the Razorbacks have gotten used to practicing with the safety protocols.
“It’s different, but we have been going through this whole summer with the same precautions,” Pool said. “For us, it’s like we’re rolling.
“Whenever we take our helmets off, we’ve got to throw the mask on. We have masks in our helmets.”
Ryan Yurachek, the oldest of Hunter and Jennifer Yurachek’s three sons, is a graduate assistant for the Razorbacks. Middle son Ryan is an Arkansas redshirt sophomore linebacker, and youngest son Brooks plays football at Fayetteville High School.
“And my wife and I both feel comfortable with them participating based on what we know,” Yurachek told Finebaum.
Boyd said he feels safe, too.
“A lot of people have to understand that we’re better here,” Boyd said of going through practices on campus and getting ready for a season scheduled to start Sept. 26 against Georgia. “If we go home, we have no safety. We have none of that.
“We probably won’t even wear a mask if we go home, individually, is what I’m saying. So [it’s good] all of us being here together and Coach getting on us like, ‘Hey, keep your mask on.’
“All around, it’s a good deal.”
Pittman trusts his players.
“I feel good about the bubble when they’re here,” Pittman said. “When they go home, I feel good about it, as well, simply because they’ve been so good for a long time.”