I got a chance to talk to Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long at length about the punishments a few other topics a little while ago.

I’ll just run some of his responses word for word below:

(On why he felt two to three games was appropriate) “I think given the poor decisions of the student athletes, the situations they place themselves in, we think this is a strong response to those young men. We think it sends them a strong message that they need to make better choices. I think that playing time is something that is very, very important. We feel like we’ve taken a substantial piece of that away from them.”

(His thoughts on John Pelphrey during this incident) “I think John has responded every time a young person has made a misstep. I think he’s responded in a very appropriate way. He has had expectations and when young men have fallen short of those expectations in our program, he has not failed to take appropriate disciplinary action. Even when it meant the possibility of losing a game on the court. I respect that. I support that. I think John understands we’re here for more than just winning basketball games. We’re here to help young men grow and develop and when they leave here, be better, productive citizens. He and I are on the exact same page there. I think I’d be more concerned if he had not responded to these missteps by the young men in the program.”

(On his support for Pelphrey) “He has my support and he’s taking the appropriate action. Do we wish we weren’t facing these situations with our players? Absolutely. Have we responded? Have we taken very substantial steps in educating them, correcting them and disciplining them? Yes. And I believe John has done that.”

(On how much blame a coach takes for repeated incidents) “I think if a coach was ignoring actions of young people or making excuses for them or those kind of things, then I think the coach certainly has some responsibility there. But when a young person who is not under our supervision 24 hours a day, seven days a week make bad choices, which young people 18 to 23, 24, do every night or every day on this campus, it’s difficult to hold a coach responsible for that. I think you can hold a coach responsible if he does not act appropriately when there’s misconduct or missteps in the program.”

(On another unrelated player suspension that was announced today) “We had a violation of team rules that occurred unrelated to this incident that they’re being disciplined for. The media will not become aware of them until the season when they see a player not playing. So what we wanted to do is not create the perception that we had these issues and between now and the start of the basketball season, we had some other issues. And so it would create the wrong perception. We wanted to try to get it out here. We have some unrelated disciplinary action that we’re going to be taking during the season. It’s not related to this incident.”

(On how all of the game suspensions will be assessed) “At the beginning of the season, the penalties will be assessed (for the recent incident). For the disciplinarian action that’s unrelated to this most recent incident, those will be spaced out in order to provide us a reasonable chance to compete with a number of players.”