Arizona football architects: Gaizka Crowley, Fletcher Kelly help build the UA's roster

When Arizona was in the process of crafting its roster for the 2025 season, no stone went unturned in player evaluation.

That includes the FCS level, where the Wildcats signed 10 players from this past recruiting cycle, which featured 61 total newcomers.

Arizona signed players from the following FCS conferences: SWAC, Big Sky, Coastal Athletic Football Conference, Southland, Southern and Ohio Valley.

Leading up to Arizona’s battle with Weber State, an FCS school in Ogden, Utah, Arizona head coach Brent Brennan said the gap in talent is “getting thinner and thinner,” he said.

“The separation is getting smaller and smaller with the revolving door of the transfer portal,” he added. “With the development that’s happening on the high school level, these (FCS) players are more ready when they go to college football. ... They got to go to those places and play and develop and it accelerated their development. Now they’re more ready to play than someone who has been here for three or four years because they’ve actually been playing in the games and developing in the process of real football and real in-game action.”

Two figures at the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility who spearheaded Arizona’s haul of FCS players are general manager Gaizka Crowley and director of scouting Fletcher Kelly. Crowley and Kelly, not the title of a buddy-cop movie or a new law firm in Tucson, but a tandem that leads Arizona’s roster construction.

“Those guys basically live here,” Brennan said. “I say that jokingly, but not really. The amount of hours and attention they put into their jobs is incredible. They’re extremely knowledgeable and extremely thorough. ...

“When Fletcher and Gaizka are going through all of those guys, they’re looking for guys that have demonstrated that they can perform at a high level on the FCS level. We’re excited about the guys in our program that have come from that and the contributions they’re going to make this year and next.”

There’s more than just football and scouting players that bond Crowley and Kelly. Both of their family lineages go back to Basque Country, an autonomous community in Northern Spain. Crowley was born in Spain and his father was a professional jai alai player and often traveled to Florida.

Kelly grew up in Homedale, Idaho, a suburb of Boise, which has the largest population of Basque people in the U.S.

“It’s a super cool thing,” Kelly said. “Gaizka and I work together extremely well and see things the same way, but on a personal level, we connect well and that’s a part of it. It’s definitely a rare deal.”

As the general manager of Arizona football, “my job is to assist the coaches in building the roster,” Crowley said.

“That obviously starts with recruiting at the high school level, the junior college level and now the transfer portal — and, more so than ever, the retention of your current players,” he said. “We have a staff here in the building that helps with different aspects of that, whether that be prospect identification, scouting, the actual recruitment of the athletes and their families, and now with revenue sharing, working with our administrators and (Athletic Director Desireé Reed-Francois’) team. It definitely changes by the day, but my job is to help our coaches build the best team that we can.”

Crowley’s career started as a Midwest regional director of recruiting and scouting for “XOS Digital” in Chicago, where he edited highlights for prospects, rated players and traveled across the U.S. to demonstrate recruiting software programs. The Florida native has also held player personnel roles at Southern Illinois, UNLV and Western Michigan. Crowley worked under former UNLV head coach Marcus Arroyo, a longtime friend of Brennan. Crowley and Brennan got to know each other over the years through “pregame handshakes” when UNLV faced the Brennan-coached San Jose State Spartans.

Brennan’s recruiting checklist is three questions: Are you tough? Do you love football? Do you love the University of Arizona?

How can you tell if a player loves football?

“I used to ask that question, but now I don’t really ask that question anymore because you’re going to ask it and the answer is always going to be yes, and then you move on to the next point,” Crowley said. “So, for me, there are two things that help me answer that: one, you can see it. You can see if a kid loves football.

“You can tell when he’s at a camp here at the U of A or our coaches are out at his practice or if I’m watching his game tape, you can feel that. You guys go to work every day, and you know the people who love the job and don’t love the job. For me, the biggest thing is can you see it?

“The other thing, as I’m creating relationships with the recruits over time, you can feel it. You can feel when you shoot them a text message or a call, how quickly do they get back to you. ... We don’t really ask the question because nowadays you get the cliché answer. But for us, you can see it and definitely feel it when you’re around a prospect and their parents.”

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Another element to Crowley’s role as Arizona’s general manager is having honest conversations with recruits about revenue sharing and their piece of the pie. Crowley said revenue share is discussed “a ton” with recruits and their families, and said “the alignment between the (Arizona football and the UA athletic administration) is critical.”

“We want to make sure we’re keeping them up to date with where we’re at in our processes,” Crowley said. “They’ve also done a great job keeping us ahead of the curve when it comes to finding out news and how the landscape is changing. It’s a huge part of it.

“Educating the players and their parents is really important that I think gets looked over. ... We break it down, we try to take it slow with the families and educate them, so at the end of the day they can make the best decision. Hopefully, it’s the U of A.”

As relentlessly as Crowley and Kelly work to bring talented players to Tucson, the deal closers are always the position coaches.

“At the end of the day, the position coaches have to connect with the prospects. At the end of the day, the mom usually has to give the kid the OK to come to the U of A,” Crowley said.

Arizona offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Seth Doege “has done a phenomenal job creating an energy and an intensity around our recruiting process,” said Crowley, who also said Arizona defensive line coach Joe Salave’a “is one of the best recruiters I’ve ever been around.

“For him, it’s his humility and his connection to parents,” Crowley said of Salave’a. “He’s a faith-based guy, a family-based guy. There’s no smooth-talking or car salesmen; it’s just a connection of genuine relationships that start with Coach (Brennan).

“Coach Doege and Coach Salave’a do a phenomenal job. Those guys push me to be a better recruiter. When you go into a recruiting meeting, you better be on your stuff because those guys are going to ask some tough questions and you better have the answers for it.”

Kelly leads a team of around a dozen student interns that pore over hours of film “essentially 24-7,” he said. Since Kelly, joined Arizona, eight student interns “either got jobs at the FBS level or the NFL level, so we’re super proud of that and the way we developed those guys,” he said.

Kelly and his staff grab film from players and create “cut-ups,” a condensed film of a potential recruit for Arizona’s coaches to watch. Cut-ups are not just highlights. It’s the good and the bad.

“That way the coaches can have not just a highlight, but a deep dive on how that player is,” Crowley said. “Fletch does a great job. He’s passionate about football, he’s passionate about the film evaluation. He and I work really well together and we’re lucky to have him.”

Kelly couldn’t pinpoint the number of high school players and transfers Arizona’s scouting team has evaluated, “but it’s definitely in the thousands,” he said. For Arizona’s 2026 recruiting class, they looked at the film of “over a thousand” players.

“The more impressive number are the boys in the back,” Kelly said. “Our student interns do an unbelievable job. They’re the first line of defense in our pipeline of prospect identification. From there, they pump them up to me. Collectively, they’ve watched every bit that I have and then some. We wouldn’t be able to operate without those guys in the back.”

Kelly’s work day at Arizona Stadium starts at 6 a.m. and will normally end around 8 or 9 p.m. Kelly’s passion for scouting started in Idaho, when he followed recruiting updates on 247Sports’ Boise State website with his grandfather.

“From the time I was in the sixth grade, we were sitting there watching guys they’d offer and watch their highlights,” said Kelly, who became a recruiting specialist at Boise State before joining Brennan’s staff at San Jose State for a season in 2023.

Added Kelly: “I absolutely nerd out on this stuff. When I go home early, I’m sitting on the La-Z-Boy with my dog and watching more film. I absolutely love this job and I couldn’t be more thankful for Coach Brennan for allowing me to be a part of this thing.”

Crowley and Kelly, the Wildcats’ roster-building duo, are in lockstep. Sometimes they’ll have differing opinions on players, but they’ll never “beg players to come to Arizona.”

“If we have to beg you to come, it’s not going to work out,” Crowley said. “We focus on guys that want to be here, that want to live in Tucson and connect with our fans. That’s the biggest thing we’re focused on. ... That’s part of our process. We want to make sure they have a passion for this place because this is a passionate fanbase and a great town. We want our players to match that.

“If you’re begging them to come here, then you’ll be begging them to stay.”