Rather than ride a shuttle to Boiseโs Taco Bell Arena last week, I walked a mile or two on Broadway Avenue until I reached Albertsons Stadium. Itโs the place with the blue turf.
The stadium itself is nothing stupefying; it is smaller, 36,387 capacity, than every football stadium in the Pac-12 except the one at Washington State. Itโs not even a tough ticket any more: Average attendance at Albertsons Stadium last year was a trifling 31,126.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.
But as I neared Bronco Lane, I saw a statue of a man, obviously the likeness an old Boise State football coach. It wasnโt any of the Broncosโ coaches you may have seen guiding bowl game upsets over Oklahoma, TCU and Arizona; not Dan Hawkins or Dirk Koetter or Chris Petersen.
It was Lyle Smith, who coached the Broncos from 1947-67, and was then their athletic director until 1981. Smith was a man of such stature in Boise that the famous blue turf โ Lyle Smith Field โ bears his name.
If anyone in Boise speaks of the โSmith era,โ they arenโt exaggerating or using the wrong term.
Smith oversaw the Broncosโ football operation for 34 years, taking it from a junior college national championship to a Division I-AA national championship.
Thatโs an era. Thatโs why you build a statue of a coach.
No football coach at Arizona has ever had an โera.โ Not in the truest sense of the word. Pop McKale coached the Wildcats for 16 years, but he averaged five victories a year.
Dick Tomey coached Arizona for 14 seasons. Was that really an โera?โ There was no Rose Bowl. The school requested he leave two years after the best season in school history. You would never willingly end an โeraโ if it was truly treasured, would you?
โEraโ is a word too loosely tossed around in sports.
I bring this to your attention because Kevin Sumlin staged his first spring practice at Arizona on Monday. I checked the Twitter feeds connected to the school and many of them said:
โThe new era starts now.โ
Itโs not a new era at all. Perhaps itโs โa new chapter.โ Or โa day of new faces.โ
College football has become such a transient industry โ moving parts and moving people โ that few head coaches stay around long enough to have an โeraโ any more. Few stay around long enough to become โold faces.โ
Terry Donahue had an โeraโ at UCLA, from 1976-95. He coached the Bruins in four Rose Bowls.
Pete Carroll at USC? He was gone in eight years. Thatโs not an โera.โ Thatโs a โtermโ or a โstint.โ
If the school builds a statue of an old coach, you can consider it an โera.โ USC erected a statue of John McKay, not Pete Carroll. McKay coached the Trojans from 1960-75 and coached in eight Rose Bowls. You can see the John McKay statue outside USCโs Heritage Hall.
Rich Rodriguez did not enjoy an โeraโ at West Virginia or anywhere. His longest period of employment was seven years, at West Virginia.
People may wish to refer to RichRodโs UA term as the โRichRod yearsโ much the same way as they discuss the โMackovic years.โ Two terms with unhappy endings.
Once you leave your old school, you are forgotten with haste.
After going 12-1 at Houston in 2011, Sumlin was hired by nearby Texas A&M and the Aggies advertised it as the โSumlin Era.โ
After six seasons, which included a 25-23 record in the SEC, the Aggies paid Sumlin a fortune to go away, and awarded Florida Stateโs Jimbo Fisher $75 million to start a new โera.โ
The Aggies opened spring practice Tuesday, and it was as if Sumlin never existed.
Fisher told reporters how A&Mโs new strength and conditioning coach, Jerry Schmidt, has altered the physical dimensions of the Aggies in just three months.
โThe bodies have changed,โ Fisher said. โWeโve changed a lot of the fat and put up a lot of muscle. Theyโve done a good job of working in the offseason. I mean, their attitude, demeanor, that type of stuff Iโve been extremely pleased with.โ
Sumlin has only been gone for 3ยฝ months, yet everything changed at Texas A&M. Names. Faces. Bodies.
Sumlin, too, hired a new strength and conditioning coach at Arizona: Brian Johnson. That transaction embodies the new age of college football. Over the last seven years, Johnson has worked on changing bodies at Texas A&M, LSU, Akron, Florida State and for the San Francisco 49ers.
Thatโs a lot of change in a small period of time, but it fits the Pac-12, which has five new head coaches working spring practice this month. Thatโs college football.
The Kevin Sumlin days have begun at Arizona. If he is still on the job in 2035, you may wish to reserve time for a statue dedication in his honor. Thatโd be an era unlike any in UA football history.
Otherwise, itโs Chapter 1: The Work Begins.
