Whenever Jedd Fisch walked around the Dick Tomey practice fields during his first spring as the Wildcats’ head coach, he was reminded of the legacy left behind by the Wildcats’ all-time winningest head coach.
The photo of Tomey — blown up on a garage-style storage building parallel to 6th Street — is of the late coach smiling on the sidelines after the Wildcats’ win over Miami in the Jan. 1, 1994 Fiesta Bowl. Tomey is wearing a red windbreaker with “Arizona Wildcats” circling the Wildcat logo over his heart.
Fisch wore a similar jacket on Saturday to honor the Arizona legend.
“We see that mural of him and this jacket — or pretty close it,” Fisch said. “I said to Barry (Boyd), our equipment manager, ‘You know what, Barry? We’ve gotta honor the best head coach that’s been here and the guy that turned Desert Swarm into what it was and had those years in the ‘90s that everybody wants to refer to and talk about.’ I said, ‘Let’s try to honor that with a jacket that I’m able to wear for the first spring game.’”
Tedy Bruschi, the 1995 Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year and one of the most successful Tomey products, “tugged on the jacket and told me, that’s a nice touch,” Fisch added.
Said Bruschi: “It’s like he knows what to do, you know what I mean? He told me he was going to do that, and it’s like — it makes me feel so much stronger about him.”
It was Bruschi who first told Fisch all about Tomey, who won 95 games between 1987-2000, when the two first talked after Fisch took the job in December.
“One of our first conversations, he asked me, ‘Tedy, tell me about Coach Tomey.’ You know what, that meant a lot to me, because of what this program means to me and what Coach Tomey meant to me,” Bruschi said. “So, that right there gave me a pretty good idea that he had the right direction on where to go and where to start.”
As for the jacket, Bruschi said: “Little things like that are so important to a lot of people, and it’s important to me too.”
Gronk sets Guinness record
Rob Gronkowski has gained a few titles during his professional career: Super Bowl winner, All-Pro tight end, horse owner, WWE champion — and now world record-holder.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers star, who was in Tucson for the first time in over a decade to serve as an honorary coach for the UA’s spring game, set a Guinness World Record for “highest altitude catch of an American football” Friday evening.
Gronkowski caught a football dropped from a helicopter 620 feet up, beating the record of 563 set in 2017 at TCU. Tyler Toney caught a ball that was dropped from 563 feet as part of a Dude Perfect YouTube video series.
The first two footballs dropped from the ‘copter landed on the ground.”Gronk” caught the third attempt, and current Wildcats mobbed him at midfield.
“Every time you step on that field, you gotta raise that bar to another level, baby!” Gronkowski said to the players after his catch, in a video produced by Liquid Light, a media company that produces a number of YouTube videos for celebrities. “And I just raised that bar to this level, baby!”
Alumni return home
More than 200 ex-Wildcats attended Saturday’s spring game, two to three times more than usual.
Besides Gronkowski, Bruschi, Arizona safeties coach Chuck Cecil and defensive line coach Ricky Hunley, the UA welcomed back multiple generations of ex-Wildcats.
Antoine Cason, Lance Briggs, Vance Johnson, Nick Folk, Willie Tuitama, Brooks Reed, Eben Britton, Shaquille Richardson, Chris Lopez, Jared Tevis, Colin Baxter, Trung Canidate, Kelvin Eafon, Ortege Jenkins, Darryl Morrison, Kelvin Hunter, Glenn Howell and Keenyn Crier all attended, among others.
“Those are great signs, because alumni have instincts,” Bruschi said. “You have instincts about coaches and feelings about them and what they’re like. … Jedd’s done such a great job at being proactive and welcoming guys, whether it’s Zoom meetings or personal calls or personal interactions.
“Word gets out and the alumni want to come see for themselves, and when the alumni want to come see for themselves, it’s a great sign.”
Recruits attend spring game
Saturday also served as an unofficial recruiting weekend for the Wildcats. Although the recruiting dead period is still in effect, several prospects attended Arizona’s spring game. Members who are already signed to the UA’s 2021 class traveled to Tucson, including South Florida transfer quarterback Jordan McCloud and Florida safety Isaiah Taylor.
Travis Gray, a 6-foot-6-inch, 300-pound offensive tackle from Aurora, Colorado, sat on the west side of Arizona Stadium. Gray told the Star he plans to announce his commitment sometime over the summer. The three-star recruit also has offers from Kansas, Maryland and San Diego State.
