Arizona has dropped to 44th overall in the annual Learfield Cup, the measurement of all-around success in Division I college athletics.
It is the UA’s lowest figure since the NCAA began tracking each athletic department’s on-field production in 1994 (then called the Sears Cup).
What makes 44th place so unsettling is that Arizona long occupied a place in NCAA sports heaven. Here’s how the UA ranked in the first 10 years of the Learfield Cup:
1994: 6th.
1995: 4th.
1996: 7th.
1997: 6th.
1998: 6th.
1999: 9th.
2000: 8th.
2001: 5th.
2002: 9th.
2003: 16th.
Since then, Arizona has dropped precipitously in athletic department success. It was 24th by 2007 and 30th by 2010. It hit a low of 36th in 2015 and this year has fallen to 44th. This year’s final standings will factor ongoing baseball, softball and track and field, but it’s unlikely Arizona will rise above 40th.
What happened?
It is probably as simple as losing five elite-level coaches: Swimming’s Frank Busch, women’s basketball’s Joan Bonvicini, track’s Dave Murray, golf’s Rick LaRose and football’s Dick Tomey.
Arizona has struggled to replace all five.
True, this year the school won Pac-12 championships in men’s basketball and softball, but that was more than offset by seventh-place or worse (and the equivalent) finishes in 12 of 19 sports: football, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s golf, gymnastics, soccer, men’s swimming, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s track and field and volleyball.
That’s a variable that is likely to define the regime of new athletic director Dave Heeke. Can he restore Arizona as a top 25 athletic department?
A bigger question might be who truly cares if Arizona struggles in anything except the Big Four: football, basketball, softball and baseball?
As successful as the UA basketball and softball teams were, the lingering memory of their 2016-17 championships is what they DIDN’T do. Arizona couldn’t get Lauri Markkanen a shot in the final 11 minutes of an agonizing Sweet 16 loss to Xavier, and the Wildcat softball team coughed up a final-inning lead to Baylor in the Super Regionals.
We should get an early glimpse of what Heeke expects from his non-revenue sports when he hires a swimming coach this summer. His predecessor, Greg Byrne, routinely chose younger and less-expensive head coaches. It’s still too soon to evaluate if Byrne’s hiring strategy worked.
Either way, at 44th in the Learfield Cup standings, Arizona trails Harvard, for crying out loud.
