Greg Hansen: Much work awaits Kevin Sumlin, whose time with Wildcats is just beginning

Rather than ride a shuttle to Boise’s Taco Bell Arena last week, I walked a mile or two on Broadway Avenue until I reached Albertsons Stadium. It’s 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. It’s 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 wasn’t any of the Broncos’ 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 — Lyle Smith Field — bears his name.

If anyone in Boise speaks of the “Smith era,” they aren’t exaggerating or using the wrong term.

Smith oversaw the Broncos’ football operation for 34 years, taking it from a junior college national championship to a Division I-AA national championship.

That’s an era. That’s why you build a statue of a coach.

No football coach at Arizona has ever had an “era.” 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 “era?” 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 “era” if it was truly treasured, would you?

“Era” 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:

“The new era starts now.”

It’s not a new era at all. Perhaps it’s “a new chapter.” Or “a day of new faces.”

College football has become such a transient industry — moving parts and moving people — that few head coaches stay around long enough to have an “era” any more. Few stay around long enough to become “old faces.”

Terry Donahue had an “era” at UCLA, from 1976-95. He coached the Bruins in four Rose Bowls.

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Pete Carroll at USC? He was gone in eight years. That’s not an “era.” That’s a “term” or a “stint.”

If the school builds a statue of an old coach, you can consider it an “era.” 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 USC’s Heritage Hall.

Rich Rodriguez did not enjoy an “era” at West Virginia or anywhere. His longest period of employment was seven years, at West Virginia.

People may wish to refer to RichRod’s UA term as the “RichRod years” much the same way as they discuss the “Mackovic years.” 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 “Sumlin Era.”

After six seasons, which included a 25-23 record in the SEC, the Aggies paid Sumlin a fortune to go away, and awarded Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher $75 million to start a new “era.”

The Aggies opened spring practice Tuesday, and it was as if Sumlin never existed.

Fisher told reporters how A&M’s new strength and conditioning coach, Jerry Schmidt, has altered the physical dimensions of the Aggies in just three months.

“The bodies have changed,” Fisher said. “We’ve changed a lot of the fat and put up a lot of muscle. They’ve done a good job of working in the offseason. I mean, their attitude, demeanor, that type of stuff I’ve been extremely pleased with.”

Sumlin has only been gone for 3½ 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.

That’s 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. That’s 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. That’d be an era unlike any in UA football history.

Otherwise, it’s Chapter 1: The Work Begins.