Arizona lost consecutive games of 69-6, 29-0, 56-0 and 78-7 to USC in the 1920s, and rather than firing the coach, the Wildcats simply stopped scheduling the Trojans. They didn’t play again for 51 years.
But this time, the Trojans are on next year’s schedule, and in 2018 and 2019 and on and on and on.
Firing the coach won’t work any more than getting out of USC’s way.
One thing to remember about Saturday’s 48-14 loss to the Trojans is that Greg Byrne’s bookkeepers say they sold all 55,463 seats. That’s the truest indication that Tucson supports football, hasn’t given up on Rich Rodriguez and that even though fewer than 300 students remained in the Zona Zoo early in the fourth quarter, the true crisis point has not been reached.
A real football crisis is if you lose the Territorial Cup to ASU to finish the season 2-10.
Arizona is awful, for sure.
The Cats are crummy, no doubt.
But the alarmists who would like to show RichRod the door need to know the financial realities of college football in Tucson: His contract runs through 2020. His base salary is $1.77 million. That’s a buyout of about $7.1 million.
There will be no coaching change.
The only positive thing to come from Saturday’s Death Valley Days performance at Arizona Stadium — someone from Fox Sports put a thermometer on the turf and said it was 137 degrees (which is preposterous; it couldn’t have been more than 127) — is that RichRod took ownership of the gathering storm.
“Some of the problems we have won’t get fixed overnight,” he said after the game. “But they’re on my watch.”
Many of the people who sat through the decidedly Soft Edge afternoon just wanted to hear the coach say that Arizona’s predicament can be traced to him and not any of the coaches he fired, nor a devastating series of injuries nor to the curvature of the Earth.
“I know a lot of the problems we can fix in the next year or two of recruiting,” he said.
What other choice is there but to believe that he’s right, and that this time his personnel evaluation acumen is better than it was when his recruiting classes of 2012, 2013 and 2014 went bust?
This is a mortgage from which the UA can’t readily escape.
There is no lovey-dovey stuff emitted from the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility. This is the first time in history that UA football has been all business, eyes on the prize, a detached approach so unlike the happy days of Larry Smith and Dick Tomey, years in which both coaches came off as someone who truly wanted to be part of the community.
RichRod, by comparison, pursued the South Carolina coaching job nine months ago and refused to talk about it. Did he want to escape the roster shortfall? Or did he just want to get back closer to his East Coast home?
It came off as sterile and detached.
It was the first clue that all was not well inside the football department.
There isn’t a coach in the Pac-12, not even Stanford’s esteemed David Shaw, who could survive the loss of two quarterbacks and play USC with a first-game freshman starter, Khalil Tate, and replace him with a tight end, Matt Morin, who has bounced from San Diego State to Saddleback College and Riverside Community College the last four years.
Tate was 1 for 7 as a passer in Saturday’s first half. He’s just not ready yet; he has probably done about 5 percent of the film study and game preparation required of a winning Power 5 quarterback. The Trojans knew Tate couldn’t pass effectively. That’s like a baseball player with facing the ’27 Yankees with nothing but fastballs over the plate.
RichRod referred to it as a “17-year-old freshman looking like a 17-year-old freshman.”
That’s the new reality of UA football.
Arizona football fans have required patience forever. On the heels of the John Mackovic fiasco, it took two 3-8 seasons before Mike Stoops could fight back.
Arizona has stepped back so far that it isn’t any better than Stoops’ 3-8 teams of 2004 and 2005. Good news? RichRod appears to have repaired a ruptured recruiting system. Now it will require time and patience just to get back to .500.
How long will that take? Closer to 2018 than 2017.
Before 54,463 fans exited Arizona Stadium prematurely Saturday, the most exciting moment was when linebacker Michael Barton scooped up a mishandled extra-point attempt and ran 80 yards to the Trojans’ end zone.
For about 20 seconds (no one is saying that Barton is the next Usain Bolt) the crowd stood and cheered as Barton outran several Trojan pursuers.
It would be a mere two points, it would only chop USC’s lead to 27-9, but it was a moment of escape on a dog days afternoon.
Alas, those two points were erased when an Arizona lineman was called for illegally blocking a Trojan 25 yards behind the play.
At that moment it was 93 degrees at Arizona Stadium. It felt like 193. The game was too long. The season is too long.
Sitting immediately below the press box, in the shade, USC alumnus Randy Johnson, the Big Unit, stood and laughed.
Much like the Big Unit, it was the Trojans who brought the heat Saturday. It is Arizona who will have to live with it.
