Greg Hansen's top 10 UA football assistants who went on to become head coaches
- Updated
Larry Smith, who coached at Tulane, Arizona, USC and Missouri, tops the list.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Editor’s note: This summer, Star columnist Greg Hansen is counting down the top 10 of just about everything related to Tucson sports.
Today’s list: the top 10 UA assistant football coaches who became head coaches:
Being an assistant football coach at Arizona doesn’t always lead to success, fame and riches, but it often leads to a better job.
Twenty-one former UA football assistants have become head coaches at all conceivable levels, from Idaho State and James Madison to Notre Dame and Texas.
Three former UA assistants – Larry Smith, John Mackovic and Bob Weber – became Arizona’s head coach.
The culture has changed. Arizona now pays two assistant coaches more than $500,000 per year; when Ed Cavanaugh was hired away from Kansas State as Arizona’s offensive line coach in 1960, he was paid $6,500. The job came with this caveat: Cavanaugh would be in charge of Arizona’s summer job-placement program for football players.
Over the next eight years, Cavanaugh found UA football players jobs as laborers at San Xavier Rock and Sand Co., and at Zion National Park. He located jobs for players as supervisor of work crews for the State Industrial School for Boys at Fort Grant. And Cavanaugh tapped into a local construction firm to get a crew of UA football players helping to build the 22nd Street overpass in 1966.
"Players who do hard road work, maintenance work, construction work, report in shape," Cavanaugh told the Star in 1964. "A lineman who works on a road gang will have less trouble on opening day than a player who doesn’t work."
College football now requires year-round athletic training and no time for the road gang.
Cavanaugh was fired in 1967 along with head coach Jim LaRue. From there, Cavanaugh coached at Utah State, for the Buffalo Bills and became the head coach at Idaho State from 1968-71 and at Army from 1980-82.
He struggled as a head coach, going 30-41-2. That’s a similar theme for the other 20 ex-Wildcat coaches who became head coaches. Here’s our list of the Top 10, based on their number of head coaching victories:
He was Arizona’s defensive coordinator from 1973-75 before winning 143 games at Tulane, Arizona, USC (he played in three Rose Bowls there) and Missouri.
As Arizona’s offensive coordinator in 1991, Hill met then-Cleveland Browns head coach Bill Belichick, who was in town to scout UA tackle John Fina. Belichick hired Hill to coach in Cleveland; Hill later went 112-80 in 15 years at Fresno State.
After starting as Arizona’s offensive coordinator in 1973, Mackovic went on to become head coach at Wake Forest, Illinois, Texas and Arizona, Mackovic went 95-82-3. But it was his four-year head coaching stint for the Kansas City Chiefs that affected Arizona most. While there, he hired UA assistant Willie Peete, who moved to Kansas just as his son, Sahuaro High School QB Rodney Peete was about to be a senior in high school. Once Rodney left town, he chose not to sign with Arizona, and perhaps take them to a Rose Bowl in 1986, but to sign with USC, where he guided Smith’s Trojans to a pair of Rose Bowls.
As Dick Tomey’s offensive line coach, McBride was among the nation’s best. He went 88-63 in 13 years as Utah’s head coach.
The man from Salpointe Catholic who designed Arizona’s Desert Swarm defensive system went 80-88 as head coach at Southern Utah, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo and Army.
Davie, a 1979 UA assistant, was 35-25 at Notre Dame and is now 27-36 at New Mexico.
A four-year UA letterman, and team captain in 1949, Spilsbury went from the UA staff to go 58-25-5 in nine years at NAU.
Part of the ill-fated Tony Mason staffs of the late-'70s, Gottfried was the head coach at Kansas, Cincinnati and Pitt, going 53-45-3 in nine seasons. Gottfried’s successor at Kansas was Bob Valesente, another coach on Mason’s UA staff.
Tomey’s second offensive coordinator at Arizona was a standout at James Madison, getting to the FCS quarterfinals, but then slumped to 22-44 in six years at Memphis.
One of the top offensive coordinators in UA and Pac-12 history — Axman coached at Washington, UCLA, Stanford and Arizona — was 48-50 in nine seasons at NAU, including three FBS playoff seasons.
Sonny Dykes has won 41 games at Louisiana Tech and Cal, but is now on the staff at TCU. At 47, he is likely to get another head coaching job. Mark Stoops is just getting going, with 19 wins a Kentucky, and Dino Babers has 22 head coaching victories at Bowling Green and Syracuse.
Editor’s note: This summer, Star columnist Greg Hansen is counting down the top 10 of just about everything related to Tucson sports.
Today’s list: the top 10 UA assistant football coaches who became head coaches:
Being an assistant football coach at Arizona doesn’t always lead to success, fame and riches, but it often leads to a better job.
Twenty-one former UA football assistants have become head coaches at all conceivable levels, from Idaho State and James Madison to Notre Dame and Texas.
Three former UA assistants – Larry Smith, John Mackovic and Bob Weber – became Arizona’s head coach.
The culture has changed. Arizona now pays two assistant coaches more than $500,000 per year; when Ed Cavanaugh was hired away from Kansas State as Arizona’s offensive line coach in 1960, he was paid $6,500. The job came with this caveat: Cavanaugh would be in charge of Arizona’s summer job-placement program for football players.
Over the next eight years, Cavanaugh found UA football players jobs as laborers at San Xavier Rock and Sand Co., and at Zion National Park. He located jobs for players as supervisor of work crews for the State Industrial School for Boys at Fort Grant. And Cavanaugh tapped into a local construction firm to get a crew of UA football players helping to build the 22nd Street overpass in 1966.
"Players who do hard road work, maintenance work, construction work, report in shape," Cavanaugh told the Star in 1964. "A lineman who works on a road gang will have less trouble on opening day than a player who doesn’t work."
College football now requires year-round athletic training and no time for the road gang.
Cavanaugh was fired in 1967 along with head coach Jim LaRue. From there, Cavanaugh coached at Utah State, for the Buffalo Bills and became the head coach at Idaho State from 1968-71 and at Army from 1980-82.
He struggled as a head coach, going 30-41-2. That’s a similar theme for the other 20 ex-Wildcat coaches who became head coaches. Here’s our list of the Top 10, based on their number of head coaching victories:
He was Arizona’s defensive coordinator from 1973-75 before winning 143 games at Tulane, Arizona, USC (he played in three Rose Bowls there) and Missouri.
As Arizona’s offensive coordinator in 1991, Hill met then-Cleveland Browns head coach Bill Belichick, who was in town to scout UA tackle John Fina. Belichick hired Hill to coach in Cleveland; Hill later went 112-80 in 15 years at Fresno State.
After starting as Arizona’s offensive coordinator in 1973, Mackovic went on to become head coach at Wake Forest, Illinois, Texas and Arizona, Mackovic went 95-82-3. But it was his four-year head coaching stint for the Kansas City Chiefs that affected Arizona most. While there, he hired UA assistant Willie Peete, who moved to Kansas just as his son, Sahuaro High School QB Rodney Peete was about to be a senior in high school. Once Rodney left town, he chose not to sign with Arizona, and perhaps take them to a Rose Bowl in 1986, but to sign with USC, where he guided Smith’s Trojans to a pair of Rose Bowls.
As Dick Tomey’s offensive line coach, McBride was among the nation’s best. He went 88-63 in 13 years as Utah’s head coach.
The man from Salpointe Catholic who designed Arizona’s Desert Swarm defensive system went 80-88 as head coach at Southern Utah, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo and Army.
Davie, a 1979 UA assistant, was 35-25 at Notre Dame and is now 27-36 at New Mexico.
A four-year UA letterman, and team captain in 1949, Spilsbury went from the UA staff to go 58-25-5 in nine years at NAU.
Part of the ill-fated Tony Mason staffs of the late-'70s, Gottfried was the head coach at Kansas, Cincinnati and Pitt, going 53-45-3 in nine seasons. Gottfried’s successor at Kansas was Bob Valesente, another coach on Mason’s UA staff.
Tomey’s second offensive coordinator at Arizona was a standout at James Madison, getting to the FCS quarterfinals, but then slumped to 22-44 in six years at Memphis.
One of the top offensive coordinators in UA and Pac-12 history — Axman coached at Washington, UCLA, Stanford and Arizona — was 48-50 in nine seasons at NAU, including three FBS playoff seasons.
Sonny Dykes has won 41 games at Louisiana Tech and Cal, but is now on the staff at TCU. At 47, he is likely to get another head coaching job. Mark Stoops is just getting going, with 19 wins a Kentucky, and Dino Babers has 22 head coaching victories at Bowling Green and Syracuse.
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