Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Don't expect TCU's Chris Del Conte to fit as Greg Byrne's successor
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Five things to consider in Arizona’s search to replace athletic director Greg Byrne:
1. Erika Barnes is much more likely to be the AD to succeed Byrne’s successor. She’s only 38 and is the department’s go-to fundraiser. Why take her out of that role, which is almost as important as the AD itself?
2. Chris Del Conte is probably among the five leading ADs in college sports. He’s almost surely not going to return to Arizona, even though it’s probably a better job than the one at TCU, which has a small profile in the greater Dallas area.
Del Conte’s buyout is close to $3 million on an eight-year contract that pays him about $1.2 million annually.
Del Conte is tight with the most coveted donors at Arizona, from Jeff Stevens and Jim Click to Arte Moreno. He would get Lute Olson’s blessing.
But Arizona will likely prefer not to write a $3 million check to TCU, preferring to apply it to badly needed on-campus infrastructure projects.
3. Texas A&M deputy AD Stephanie Rempe is a former Arizona volleyball player who learned the ropes in the Jim Livengood administration and worked her way through the system at UTEP, Oklahoma and as the top senior administrator at Washington.
She seems sure to be an AD somewhere soon. Arizona? Those making the hire will ask if Rempe is more qualified than Barnes. Rempe is married to a former UA athletic trainer, Greg Remien, has two younger children and has impressive experience in every aspect of college sports except detailed fundraising. That’s a possible game-changer.
If UA President Ann Weaver Hart chooses to hire a female AD, the fourth currently in Power 5 conferences, Rempe would seem to be the No. 1 choice.
4. Mark Harlan did everything in his days at Arizona from fix up the visitor’s football locker room and manage game-day events to being a key fundraiser. He practically grew up in Tucson as Dick Tomey’s son.
Now the AD at South Florida after serving in the No. 2 seat at UCLA, Harlan was the force behind hiring UCLA basketball coach Steve Alford out of a messy contract situation at New Mexico. He met his wife in Tucson, his son was born in Tucson.
Much like Byrne, he is active in social media and, at 46, has the energy to operate a Pac-12 athletic department.
5. The search for Hart’s replacement as UA president is bogged down by a slow-moving, 22-member search committee. That can’t be good. She is wisely keeping the AD search committee to a few trusted people — it’s unsure if those searching for Byrne’s replacement will ever be identified — which will expedite the process.
The new AD should be hired before the Final Four, which might keep poachers from tempting Sean Miller to leave.
A potential wild card in the process is Baylor AD Mack Rhoades, a former basketball player at Rincon High School and a UA grad.
But Rhoades has been at Baylor for just eight months. Before that, he was involved in a cauldron of messy experiences at Missouri, leaving after 14 months. When hired by Baylor, Rhoades said, “This is my last job.”
But that’s what Rich Rodriguez said when he was hired at Michigan and when he was hired at Arizona — and 13 months ago he attempted to be the head coach at South Carolina.
Anything goes in these searches. One doesn’t need a connection to Arizona, but rather one with Hart and donors like Stevens and Cole Davis.
Utah’s Chris Hill, Kansas State’s John Currie and Houston’s Hunter Yurachek might be available; all are first-level ADs.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Football recruiting for the Class of 2017 concludes in 10 days, but RichRod’s staff is working beyond that. Last week they offered a scholarship to Salpointe Catholic freshman back/receiver Bijan Robinson, who gained 727 all-purpose yards in his varsity debut and projects to be a 4-star prospect soon. Those who recruit Salpointe will soon target 6-foot 5-inch, 255-pound junior lineman Matteo Mele, who has impressive football bloodlines. He is the grandson of Arizona’s 1967 all-WAC lineman Bill Lueck, who was the first-round draft pick of Vince Lombardi’s Packers in 1968. Lueck played eight NFL seasons. Mele is so versatile that he caught eight passes last fall, and has size to be a Pac-12 prospect.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Retired Sabino High football coach Jay Campos will be in Atlanta on Sunday for the NFC championship game. He was encouraged to attend by former Sabercat and UA pass-rusher Brooks Reed, who has been a strong contributor to the Falcons defense this year. Reed is in the second year of a five-year, $22 million contract. In two playoff games, he has made six tackles with two QB sacks.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Arizona baseball coach Jay Johnson, who has more than 12 prospects committed to the Classes of 2018 and 2019, played host to a 16-team, elite baseball camp last weekend. Rain got in the way, but Johnson doesn’t slow down much. One of the top prospects in camp was Trip McKinley of the IMG Baseball Academy in Bradenton, Florida, who is being sought by all the SEC powerhouses. Johnson isn’t aiming low.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
When Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott released the league’s 2017 football schedules last week, Arizona probably got the best of the draw. The Wildcats don’t play Washington and Stanford, which, with USC, are apt to be projected among the league’s top three powers. Even though Arizona’s nonconference schedule (Houston, UTEP, NAU) remains tissue-soft, the unfortunate trend is that many are following Arizona’s lead. Defending champion Washington plays Fresno State, Montana and Rutgers. And South champ Colorado plays Texas State, Northern Colorado and Colorado State. It’s a disturbing trend, as is Arizona’s Friday night home game, Sept. 22, against Utah. It’s the UA’s first Friday night game to conflict with a dozen or more local high school football games that isn’t on Labor Day weekend. Not a good trend.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Speaking of flawed scheduling, the Pac-12 sentenced USC’s basketball team to a Sunday night game at Colorado last week. The Trojans got home past midnight to begin preparations for Thursday’s early start, 6 p.m., in Los Angeles, against Arizona. The Wildcats had a full week to prepare for the Trojans. USC coach Andy Enfeld avoided a monetary fine by not going public with his unhappiness.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Statistic of the week by Star football writer Michael Lev: When Washington State senior QB Luke Falk plays in Tucson next football season, he will surely be compared to the most productive – perhaps THE most productive – opposing QB in UA history. Falk has completed 79 of 97 passes (81.4 percent) for 825 yards and nine touchdowns in two games against Arizona, both victories. He has not thrown an interception. That’s impressive when you consider John Elway was 1-2 against Arizona in his Stanford career.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Joan Bonvicini is one of 12 finalists for the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s not a tough call. She should already be in. Bonvicini won 701 games at Long Beach State, Arizona and Seattle, and her 17-year run at McKale Center was more than the school could’ve expected. At 63, Bonvicini has retired from coaching and lives much of the year in Tucson while working as a Pac-12 Networks analyst.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Until Greg Byrne changed the way ADs operate in the Pac-12, schools like ASU rarely trotted their AD out for public settings that didn’t involve donors. But now the Sun Devils have scheduled “A Lunch With AD Ray Anderson,” on Feb. 13 at a near-campus golf course. Anderson and members of the Sun Devil coaching and administrative staffs will hold a 60- to 75-minute briefing on the state of Sun Devils sports. Progress and transparency.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
While helping Pusch Ridge to the state football championship in 2015, receiver Edwin Lovett was a standout; he caught passes for 1,051 yards and 14 touchdowns the last two seasons. The son of former UA receiver Lamar Lovett was offered a scholarship by academic powerhouse Colorado School of Mines on an official visit to Golden, Colorado, last week. The Orediggers were 10-3 last year, reaching the second round of the NCAA Division II playoffs. It is the school of former Tucson High and Pima College all-star Murphy Gershman, who is averaging 15 minutes and 4.6 points per game for Colorado School of Mines’ 15-3 basketball team.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Golf Digest last week named its Top 200 golf courses in America. Oro Valley’s Stone Canyon Club ranked No. 155, which was No. 3 in Arizona and ahead of such notable national-name golf courses as Whistling Straits, the Atlanta Country Club, Kiawah Island and Torrey Pines South. Because the Stone Canyon Club is private, owned by Phil Mickelson’s group, most Tucson golfers haven’t been able to experience it. Pros Mike Russell and Brent Newcomb have helped to make it a worthy member of the Top 200, and climbing. If I could play any three Southern Arizona courses, I would play Stone Canyon, the Gallery Golf Club’s north course and Dell Urich, a piece-of-heaven muni course in the heart of Tucson.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
The unspoken challenge for Greg Byrne at Alabama will be how his out-front, social-media and willingness to be in the spotlight routine plays in a football-centric community.
Byrne carried a higher profile in Tucson than both Rich Rodriguez and Sean Miller. That might not work in Tuscaloosa, where football coach Nick Saban is worshiped.
What if a key Alabama football player commits an off-campus transgression, a brush with the law, and Saban says the player will remain in the lineup?
Who’s going to tell Saban no?
In 1996, Alabama hired ex-Arizona associate AD Bob Bockrath to be its AD. Bockrath, who was an excellent college administrator, the AD at Cal and Texas Tech after leaving Arizona, had to replace ‘Bama’s national championship coach Gene Stallings in his first year in Tuscaloosa.
He chose Alabama blood, line coach Mike DuBose, who played for the great Bear Bryant.
But DuBose was a colossal failure, and after losing to Louisiana-Lafayette early in the 1999 season, Alabama fired Bockrath, not DuBose, until a year later.
But that was a generation ago. Today, Bockrath would be viewed as a home-run hire anywhere. In 1999, he didn’t have Crimson Tide blood and it cost him his job.
Byrne’s timing is much better.
Five things to consider in Arizona’s search to replace athletic director Greg Byrne:
1. Erika Barnes is much more likely to be the AD to succeed Byrne’s successor. She’s only 38 and is the department’s go-to fundraiser. Why take her out of that role, which is almost as important as the AD itself?
2. Chris Del Conte is probably among the five leading ADs in college sports. He’s almost surely not going to return to Arizona, even though it’s probably a better job than the one at TCU, which has a small profile in the greater Dallas area.
Del Conte’s buyout is close to $3 million on an eight-year contract that pays him about $1.2 million annually.
Del Conte is tight with the most coveted donors at Arizona, from Jeff Stevens and Jim Click to Arte Moreno. He would get Lute Olson’s blessing.
But Arizona will likely prefer not to write a $3 million check to TCU, preferring to apply it to badly needed on-campus infrastructure projects.
3. Texas A&M deputy AD Stephanie Rempe is a former Arizona volleyball player who learned the ropes in the Jim Livengood administration and worked her way through the system at UTEP, Oklahoma and as the top senior administrator at Washington.
She seems sure to be an AD somewhere soon. Arizona? Those making the hire will ask if Rempe is more qualified than Barnes. Rempe is married to a former UA athletic trainer, Greg Remien, has two younger children and has impressive experience in every aspect of college sports except detailed fundraising. That’s a possible game-changer.
If UA President Ann Weaver Hart chooses to hire a female AD, the fourth currently in Power 5 conferences, Rempe would seem to be the No. 1 choice.
4. Mark Harlan did everything in his days at Arizona from fix up the visitor’s football locker room and manage game-day events to being a key fundraiser. He practically grew up in Tucson as Dick Tomey’s son.
Now the AD at South Florida after serving in the No. 2 seat at UCLA, Harlan was the force behind hiring UCLA basketball coach Steve Alford out of a messy contract situation at New Mexico. He met his wife in Tucson, his son was born in Tucson.
Much like Byrne, he is active in social media and, at 46, has the energy to operate a Pac-12 athletic department.
5. The search for Hart’s replacement as UA president is bogged down by a slow-moving, 22-member search committee. That can’t be good. She is wisely keeping the AD search committee to a few trusted people — it’s unsure if those searching for Byrne’s replacement will ever be identified — which will expedite the process.
The new AD should be hired before the Final Four, which might keep poachers from tempting Sean Miller to leave.
A potential wild card in the process is Baylor AD Mack Rhoades, a former basketball player at Rincon High School and a UA grad.
But Rhoades has been at Baylor for just eight months. Before that, he was involved in a cauldron of messy experiences at Missouri, leaving after 14 months. When hired by Baylor, Rhoades said, “This is my last job.”
But that’s what Rich Rodriguez said when he was hired at Michigan and when he was hired at Arizona — and 13 months ago he attempted to be the head coach at South Carolina.
Anything goes in these searches. One doesn’t need a connection to Arizona, but rather one with Hart and donors like Stevens and Cole Davis.
Utah’s Chris Hill, Kansas State’s John Currie and Houston’s Hunter Yurachek might be available; all are first-level ADs.
Football recruiting for the Class of 2017 concludes in 10 days, but RichRod’s staff is working beyond that. Last week they offered a scholarship to Salpointe Catholic freshman back/receiver Bijan Robinson, who gained 727 all-purpose yards in his varsity debut and projects to be a 4-star prospect soon. Those who recruit Salpointe will soon target 6-foot 5-inch, 255-pound junior lineman Matteo Mele, who has impressive football bloodlines. He is the grandson of Arizona’s 1967 all-WAC lineman Bill Lueck, who was the first-round draft pick of Vince Lombardi’s Packers in 1968. Lueck played eight NFL seasons. Mele is so versatile that he caught eight passes last fall, and has size to be a Pac-12 prospect.
Retired Sabino High football coach Jay Campos will be in Atlanta on Sunday for the NFC championship game. He was encouraged to attend by former Sabercat and UA pass-rusher Brooks Reed, who has been a strong contributor to the Falcons defense this year. Reed is in the second year of a five-year, $22 million contract. In two playoff games, he has made six tackles with two QB sacks.
Arizona baseball coach Jay Johnson, who has more than 12 prospects committed to the Classes of 2018 and 2019, played host to a 16-team, elite baseball camp last weekend. Rain got in the way, but Johnson doesn’t slow down much. One of the top prospects in camp was Trip McKinley of the IMG Baseball Academy in Bradenton, Florida, who is being sought by all the SEC powerhouses. Johnson isn’t aiming low.
When Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott released the league’s 2017 football schedules last week, Arizona probably got the best of the draw. The Wildcats don’t play Washington and Stanford, which, with USC, are apt to be projected among the league’s top three powers. Even though Arizona’s nonconference schedule (Houston, UTEP, NAU) remains tissue-soft, the unfortunate trend is that many are following Arizona’s lead. Defending champion Washington plays Fresno State, Montana and Rutgers. And South champ Colorado plays Texas State, Northern Colorado and Colorado State. It’s a disturbing trend, as is Arizona’s Friday night home game, Sept. 22, against Utah. It’s the UA’s first Friday night game to conflict with a dozen or more local high school football games that isn’t on Labor Day weekend. Not a good trend.
Speaking of flawed scheduling, the Pac-12 sentenced USC’s basketball team to a Sunday night game at Colorado last week. The Trojans got home past midnight to begin preparations for Thursday’s early start, 6 p.m., in Los Angeles, against Arizona. The Wildcats had a full week to prepare for the Trojans. USC coach Andy Enfeld avoided a monetary fine by not going public with his unhappiness.
Statistic of the week by Star football writer Michael Lev: When Washington State senior QB Luke Falk plays in Tucson next football season, he will surely be compared to the most productive – perhaps THE most productive – opposing QB in UA history. Falk has completed 79 of 97 passes (81.4 percent) for 825 yards and nine touchdowns in two games against Arizona, both victories. He has not thrown an interception. That’s impressive when you consider John Elway was 1-2 against Arizona in his Stanford career.
Joan Bonvicini is one of 12 finalists for the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s not a tough call. She should already be in. Bonvicini won 701 games at Long Beach State, Arizona and Seattle, and her 17-year run at McKale Center was more than the school could’ve expected. At 63, Bonvicini has retired from coaching and lives much of the year in Tucson while working as a Pac-12 Networks analyst.
Until Greg Byrne changed the way ADs operate in the Pac-12, schools like ASU rarely trotted their AD out for public settings that didn’t involve donors. But now the Sun Devils have scheduled “A Lunch With AD Ray Anderson,” on Feb. 13 at a near-campus golf course. Anderson and members of the Sun Devil coaching and administrative staffs will hold a 60- to 75-minute briefing on the state of Sun Devils sports. Progress and transparency.
While helping Pusch Ridge to the state football championship in 2015, receiver Edwin Lovett was a standout; he caught passes for 1,051 yards and 14 touchdowns the last two seasons. The son of former UA receiver Lamar Lovett was offered a scholarship by academic powerhouse Colorado School of Mines on an official visit to Golden, Colorado, last week. The Orediggers were 10-3 last year, reaching the second round of the NCAA Division II playoffs. It is the school of former Tucson High and Pima College all-star Murphy Gershman, who is averaging 15 minutes and 4.6 points per game for Colorado School of Mines’ 15-3 basketball team.
Golf Digest last week named its Top 200 golf courses in America. Oro Valley’s Stone Canyon Club ranked No. 155, which was No. 3 in Arizona and ahead of such notable national-name golf courses as Whistling Straits, the Atlanta Country Club, Kiawah Island and Torrey Pines South. Because the Stone Canyon Club is private, owned by Phil Mickelson’s group, most Tucson golfers haven’t been able to experience it. Pros Mike Russell and Brent Newcomb have helped to make it a worthy member of the Top 200, and climbing. If I could play any three Southern Arizona courses, I would play Stone Canyon, the Gallery Golf Club’s north course and Dell Urich, a piece-of-heaven muni course in the heart of Tucson.
The unspoken challenge for Greg Byrne at Alabama will be how his out-front, social-media and willingness to be in the spotlight routine plays in a football-centric community.
Byrne carried a higher profile in Tucson than both Rich Rodriguez and Sean Miller. That might not work in Tuscaloosa, where football coach Nick Saban is worshiped.
What if a key Alabama football player commits an off-campus transgression, a brush with the law, and Saban says the player will remain in the lineup?
Who’s going to tell Saban no?
In 1996, Alabama hired ex-Arizona associate AD Bob Bockrath to be its AD. Bockrath, who was an excellent college administrator, the AD at Cal and Texas Tech after leaving Arizona, had to replace ‘Bama’s national championship coach Gene Stallings in his first year in Tuscaloosa.
He chose Alabama blood, line coach Mike DuBose, who played for the great Bear Bryant.
But DuBose was a colossal failure, and after losing to Louisiana-Lafayette early in the 1999 season, Alabama fired Bockrath, not DuBose, until a year later.
But that was a generation ago. Today, Bockrath would be viewed as a home-run hire anywhere. In 1999, he didn’t have Crimson Tide blood and it cost him his job.
Byrne’s timing is much better.
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