Last week was the NCAA’s fall signing period for most Division I sports, at Arizona and elsewhere, a time that 1975 Amphitheater state championship football linebacker Steve Doolittle remembers well.
“Arizona’s head football coach then was Tony Mason,” Doolittle said Friday, in town to watch his alma mater, Colorado, play at Arizona Stadium. “He came into my living room wearing this loud, checkered suit, and it just seemed over the top to me.”
Doolittle did not get the wine-and-dine treatment that 21st century recruits do; Arizona recruits are lodged at the Westin La Paloma. “When I visited Colorado,” he said, “we had to stay in the dorms.”
Doolittle, an Amphitheater High School standout, said he was intrigued by UCLA, which sent then-defensive coordinator Dick Tomey to Tucson to watch Doolittle play basketball. But the Bruins weren’t as aggressive as Doolittle hoped, and his college choices were narrowed to Colorado, Arizona State and New Mexico.
Ultimately, Doolittle chose CU on the advice of his mother, a single mom who worked at Furr’s cafeteria and was a house cleaner.
“She told me, ‘go away and become a man,’” Doolittle remembers. “My father died when I was 10. Leaving Tucson was the right choice.”
At CU, Doolittle made 231 career tackles, was the team captain in 1980, and later played in the USFL for Memphis and New Orleans, among other pro teams. He became an actor.
For Doolittle, a man his teammates and friends call “Dewey,” letter-of-intent day 40 years ago became a career home run.
