'Everyone loved Lute and those posters': Tucson photographer turned baby bobcat into a big break

Sometime before the 1984-85 college basketball season, Dave Sitton called Tucson photographer Chris Mooney with an idea for an Arizona Wildcats schedule poster.

Sitton, a longtime broadcaster for the Wildcats, didn’t want the usual schedule poster — a photograph of players making a “game face” or action photos from the prior season.

No, no, no. Sitton thought outside the box, which is how he and Mooney ended up face-to-face with a baby bobcat inside Mooney’s studio at Sixth Street and Campbell Avenue.

Mooney managed to get the bobcat on top of an Arizona jersey, sneaker and basketball. With a portrait of Lute Olson, who died last week at 85, below it, Mooney created his first poster for the UA men’s basketball program.

Mooney was never the Wildcats’ official photographer, but his work left such a great first impression on Olson that he would produce team posters annually until the coach’s retirement. Mooney produced more than 100 posters for UA sports programs during two decades on the job.

“That’s what started it, and Lute just kind of let me run with it,” Mooney said. “Lute trusted me.”

Over the years, at Mooney’s behest, Olson dressed up as a cowboy, firefighter, fighter pilot, construction worker and, well, himself. Asked this week to pick a favorite poster, Mooney hesitated.

“They’re like your babies,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Which kid do you like best?’”

How Mooney ended up producing posters that still hang in Tucson restaurants, bars, businesses and home garages is an unlikely story. The Northern Arizona graduate had no desire to ever watch a ballgame on TV, much less in person, even as the Wildcats were building what would become a powerhouse program.

Mooney says now that he was in the right place at the right time. Sitton died in 2013.

“I’m an OK photographer, and there’s a bunch of photographers they could’ve used, but I was lucky,” Mooney said. “(Olson) always said I made him look good. I thought that was funny that he’d tell me that, because he was just a good-looking guy and easy to photograph.”

Mooney worked quickly, which helped. Olson “was always in and out in five or 10 minutes. He never had a stand around for this long photo shoot,” Mooney said.

The posters’ themes varied depending on current events.

The 2007-08 poster featured them with the slogan, “It’s All Business,” and digital numbers that resembled a stock market board.

“The stock market was on everyone’s mind in 2008 when it crashed,” Mooney said.

The 1994-95 poster, “Arizona Territory,” had the entire UA team in uniform in front of a saloon at Old Tucson Studios, while the coaches donned cowboy costumes. Standing front and center was Olson, who — with his 6-foot-3-inch frame and shock of white hair — could’ve co-starred in a movie with John Wayne if he didn’t coach basketball.

“In the ‘Arizona Territory’ one, Lute got to be a sheriff and I think that was his favorite one,” Mooney said. “Him and (wife) Bobbi loved to dress up for the Fiesta Bowl. Bobbi would dress to the nines in her cowboy outfit, and Lute would wear his Cowboy hat.”

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Bobbi Olson “would always talk to me about the posters,” Mooney added. “She always said I made Lute look good.”

The 1985-86 “Abso-Lute-ly” poster featuring Steve Kerr was supposed to have Olson in the center, but the coach had a schedule conflict the same time as the shoot.

Mooney’s 2001-02 poster featuring Luke Walton, Jason Gardner and Rick Anderson posing in front of an off-white Cadillac at the old De Anza drive-in was another classic. Walton was late to Mooney’s shoot because his 1970 Cadillac convertible was having issues. A local car dealership lent a similar model for the shoot.

“Only a basketball player could pull that off, and he did it in like half-an-hour,” Mooney said.

As the years progressed, Mooney relied on graphic designer Don Regole to add his digital touch to the posters. The numbers on the ’08 poster? That’s Regole. The “Showtime” lights on the 2004-05 poster were Regole’s work, with Mooney coming up with the theme.

Mooney created the “Showtime” idea after seeing Arizona’s metallic gray warmups. Olson and the coaching staff wore tuxedos and bow ties.

“That’s what inspired the ‘Showtime’ theme, because you have these gray, shiny warmups, and I thought, ‘Well, basketball is the show and we all love the show.’ That’s when I got the coaches in bow ties to go with the silver warmups.”

The poster outlived the gray gear.

“The team hated the warmups. They only wore them for, like, one season,” Mooney said.

Of course, taking photos of basketball players has its perks. Mooney said the most energetic Wildcat to take poster photos was forward Eugene Edgerson, and the “showboats” were Sean Elliott and Joseph Blair. Mooney went on to photograph Steve and Margot Kerr’s wedding at the St. Thomas More Catholic Newman Center.

With the hundreds of faces that came through the program, Olson was a constant. Mooney said he’s indebted to the coaching legend for improving his life.

“Like a lot of people in Tucson, he made my career. The basketball players — those guys went off to the NBA, but everyone loved Lute and those posters,” Mooney said. “It was a big boost for my career so I’m grateful.

“I look back now and think, ‘How the hell did you pull it off?’ You do one great poster and sit back and think, ‘Wow I did that.’ When I look back on my career, doing all these posters, I get choked up. You don’t realize what you’re doing when you’re doing it.

“I kind of knew this was history. I knew this was special. … Everyone has a special memory of a certain season or a player. It makes me feel like I did something.”

Like the time Mooney had players pretend like they were flying through space for the 1993-94 “Universe of Arizona” poster. Mooney instructed the players — and Olson — to lie flat on a bench so he could shoot them individually as they pretended to soar through space.

“Lute said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I told him, ‘I want you to lie on the bench upside down and I’m going to photograph you from this angle,’” Mooney said.

“He looked at me kinda funny and said, ‘Chris, I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you.’”