Every first game is a mystery in college football — not a whodunit but a “who are they?”
Unlike the NFL, college football has no preseason. When rookies play in their first college game, it’s literally their first game.
Arizona’s 2016 opener Saturday features more unknowns than most. Who will start at quarterback for the Wildcats? Who will be their kicker? Will their punter be the same person? What will the defense look like? And we haven’t even mentioned BYU, which has a new coach and new coordinators in all three phases.
But no question is harder to answer, no outcome harder to predict, than this: How will those young guys perform under the Saturday night lights?
Like every other team in the country, Arizona’s depth chart is dotted with freshmen and redshirt freshmen. Week 1 features six of the former and seven of the latter. Some will start, including center Nathan Eldridge and defensive end Justin Belknap. Others are expected to play. Some might not know it yet, as happened to UA defensive line coach Vince Amey back in 1994.
“It was against Miami,” Amey recalled of his college debut with Arizona State. “I really didn’t plan on playing. But a couple guys went down, and Rod Marinelli, our D-line coach at the time, was like, ‘All right, Vince! You gotta go!’
“I was a true freshman, and their boys were 6-6 across the board, and they were fast and physical. I remember going in and the quarterback looking at me, literally checking the play to go right at me. I could see it. All of them looked at me. It was like, ‘That freshman right there! Let’s go!’
“I never looked back from there. I remembered the nerves and the fear, but the fear got me through it. Ever since then I’ve been good to go.”
UA coaches and players shared similar tales of first-game jitters and overflowing adrenaline. Safety Jarvis McCall Jr., now a redshirt junior, recalled having to calm himself down before his Arizona debut in 2014. He remembers looking around and thinking, “Man, I made it. Now I’ve got to go perform.”
UA coach Rich Rodriguez wants his young players to worry about only one thing: the next play. As hard as it might be, don’t think about your stats, the circumstances or the crowd, even though, in most cases, it’ll be the largest any of them have experienced as players.
“It sounds like coach-speak, but we really have to focus on just winning a play at a time,” Rodriguez said. “We’re not going to win them all, but if we win more than we lose, we’re going to win the game. For young guys, that’s what they need to focus on — just that next play and doing as well as they can.”
Arizona is especially youthful at safety, where only senior Tellas Jones has substantial starting experience at that position. (McCall played his first two seasons at cornerback.)
The backups at the three safety spots consist of one redshirt freshman, Anthony Mariscal, and two true freshmen, Isaiah Hayes and Chacho Ulloa. The plan is to rotate safeties, so all three are expected to play.
For Mariscal, Saturday’s game will be his first that counts in the standings since 2014, when he was a senior at Liberty High in Bakersfield, California.
Is he nervous?
“I’m a little nervous,” Mariscal said. “But it’s always good to be nervous. It just shows that you care.
“I’ve been preparing. I’ve been looking over all my stuff, watching film with Coach (Jahmile) Addae, watching Tellas.”
Jones’ message for Mariscal and the other young safeties, a group that includes five true freshmen: “If you’re here, you’re here for a reason.”
It didn’t take Addae long to feel that he belonged, even though he was a 17-year-old making his debut against the No. 1 team in the country. Addae was a freshman safety at West Virginia. Rodriguez was his coach. Addae remembers being “really nervous.”
But about midway through the first quarter against mighty Miami, something changed. Addae realized: “I can play with these guys. This is high school all over again. They’re a little bit faster and a little bit bigger, but so am I. At that point in time it was time to go.”
Addae will be on the sideline Saturday, trying to help his players navigate their nerves, block out the noise and play up to their potential. One of the keys, Addae said, is being able to come to the coaches and “regurgitate.”
Information, that is.
