Four postseason thoughts about Rich Rodriguez and the trajectory of Arizona’s football program:
1. The most interesting transaction of the offseason will be whether AD Greg Byrne rolls over RichRod’s contract for a fifth year, through 2021, which has become somewhat routine in big-money college sports. But in March, UCLA basketball coach Steve Alford apologized to Bruins fans for finishing 10th in the Pac-12 and asked the school to delete the fifth year of his contract. Stay tuned.
2. According to a November 2014 Board of Regents meeting, RichRod was to be paid a $375,000 retention bonus last Thursday. He will not be paid $75,000 for a low-level bowl appearance, as per his contract. His offensive coordinator, Calvin Magee, and defensive coordinator, Marcel Yates, will not realize bowl-game bonuses of about $42,000 each, per their contracts. If defensive backs coach Donté Williams leaves for Nebraska, as expected, Yates could coach defensive backs and hire a linebackers coach.
3. Talent drain: Arizona did not place a player on the All-Pac-12 first or second teams last week, the first time it's happened since Arizona joined the Pac-10 in 1978. Worse, the UA had just three honorable-mention selections (receivers Samajie Grant, Nate Phillips and Trey Griffey), the fewest HM picks at Arizona since 1980. All of that lack of star power leads to last place.
4. RichRod’s post-Territorial Cup statements included this: “I think it’s going to certainly be one of the best (recruiting) classes we’ve had and maybe the school’s had.”
Without going back to the Desert Swarm-building classes of 1989/1990, or to the 12-1 Holiday Bowl classes of 1995/1996 — or to the bountiful recruiting periods of the early 1980s — let’s go back to Mike Stoops’ Class of 2010.
It included multi-year starters Shaquille Richardson, Sani Fuimaono, Fabbians Ebbele, Mickey Baucus, Jonathan Mc-
Knight, Marquis Flowers, Austin Hill, Dan Pettinato, Jourdon Grandon, Derek Earls and Paul Vassallo, among others.
Stoops’ second-to-last UA class was the nucleus of RichRod’s 2012 and 2013 bowl teams. If RichRod can merely match Stoops’ recruiting efforts of 2010, it would be considered a triumph.
