Coaching with Arizona football 'a no-brainer opportunity' for ex-Cat Ronnie Palmer

The University of Arizona holds a special place in the heart of Ronnie Palmer.

Palmer’s football-playing career steered him to Tucson to play linebacker for the Arizona Wildcats.

The UA is also where he met his wife in former UA softball player Lauren Schutzler. They have two daughters — one of them wears No. 33, Palmer’s number at Arizona, when she’s playing flag football.

“There were some good times on the field, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say probably my best moment at Arizona was meeting my wife,” Palmer said.

In March, the Palmers returned to where the family origin story began at Arizona, with Ronnie Palmer as an assistant defensive line coach on head coach Brent Brennan’s staff. Palmer will work in tandem with first-year defensive line coach and fellow ex-Wildcat Joe Salave’a.

“It’s just great to be here,” Palmer said. “Man, it’s a great day to be a Wildcat and I’m fired up to be back in Tucson. It’s home. It’s just so good to be back. My wife and I are so excited to get our family out here later this year, and we’re just honored and blessed for that opportunity.”

In the spring, Brennan said, “Any time we can bring somebody back into the program that played here and is part of the legacy here at Arizona football, that’s powerful.”

“They can talk about this place to their recruits and families in ways that a lot of us can’t,” Brennan added.

Palmer grew up in Spring, Texas, and graduated from Spring High School just outside of Houston and “never really left the state of Texas” until he garnered college offers from Power 5 football programs. Notre Dame and LSU were among his top choices until the Wildcats hired former head coach Mike Stoops, who was formerly an assistant coach at Oklahoma under Bob Stoops (his brother).

“If you’re a Big 12-area guy, the (Stoops) name rung a bell,” Palmer said.

Palmer was an OU fan, so when Mike Stoops became the head coach of the Wildcats, “Arizona became a priority,” the linebacker said.

When Arizona was led by former head coach John Mackovic, “I had a lot of letters from Arizona that I had not opened,” Palmer said.

“So I was all about Mike, and Mike Stoops is good people,” Palmer said. “We still talk today.”

Palmer first met Stoops and former UA assistant Eric Wolford at his part-time job at a Taco Bell-Pizza Hut combination restaurant.

“They were sitting outside and came in to meet my manager,” Palmer said. “We did the home visit right after.”

When Palmer took an official visit to the UA, “there were about seven or eight other guys from Texas and we just absolutely fell in love with the place,” he said.

“It was in January, it was hot, it was sunny,” Palmer said. “Went to a basketball game and there were some of the greats on that basketball floor that were playing and and then I took a trip to Notre Dame, it was my first time seeing snow. So I’m like, ‘Alright, snow? Desert? Snow? Desert?’

“It was an easy choice. It was a complicated choice, but it was pretty easy. I love that decision and Arizona has made me who I am today. It helped me grow up. It helped me become a young man. If I could do it all over again, I would.”

Since Arizona made a concerted effort to recruit Texas under Stoops, “it was easy to feel the home vibes,” Palmer said.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“I knew I was going to leave the state of Texas,” Palmer said. “(Texas), (Texas A&M), Baylor, I was over on that part of the recruiting department and I wanted to leave the South. So, leaving the South, leaving LSU, leaving Arkansas and then finding a place that was a college town that had so much southern representation, it really made it beneficial for my career.”

From 2005-08, Palmer registered 275 tackles, four sacks and three interceptions. As a team captain in 2008, Palmer led the Wildcats to a Holiday Bowl win over BYU, the program’s first postseason victory in a decade. Like most freshmen, Palmer believed he was talented enough to play in the early stages of his Arizona career until former linebackers coach Tim Kish told him to “check my ego,” said Palmer.

There were “a lot of growing pains, but a lot of maturity happened in that process.”

“You learned so much from losses,” Palmer said. “You learned so much from adversity. I loved every minute of it. Even the bad times that were struggles from week to week, we were able to celebrate it, even in that first season where we went 3-8. ... But for me, it was about going out with a bowl. There was no better way. There was no other way to leave my career at Arizona. ... You look back at where this place was going and a lot of it was from recruiting special people and a lot of it was just from taking the time to let the program build. Mike did a great job.”

Palmer was teammates with several NFL Wildcats, including tight end Rob Gronkowski, defensive tackle Earl Mitchell, cornerback Antoine Cason, linebacker Spencer Larsen and Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles, who was Arizona’s scout-team quarterback after transferring from Michigan State during Palmer’s senior season.

Palmer’s favorite memory from his Arizona career was beating rival Arizona State in 2008, which punched the Wildcats’ ticket to the Las Vegas Bowl.

“Beating the Scum Devils my senior year to go to the Vegas bowl was a big game,” he said. “It just kind of put an exclamation mark on five years at Arizona, and then the bowl game was just icing on the cake.”

Palmer signed with the Washington Redskins as an undrafted free agent before two stints in the UFL. Palmer won a UFL championship in 2009 with the Las Vegas Locomotives.

“I gave it three years,” Palmer said of his professional-playing career. “Three years is enough time to try to make some way in the professional rankings, in the NFL and stuff. ... I really started to try to search for what’s next.”

Palmer joined Stoops’ staff at Arizona as a quality control coach in 2011, before earning roles at Colorado State, Texas A&M-Kingsville and Northern Colorado. Palmer’s first coaching stint at Arizona “was a unique experience,” because he joined midway through the season and spent six weeks with the program. Even though Stoops was fired when Palmer first arrived, the former Arizona linebacker discovered his passion for coaching.

“There’s a strange, amazing addiction with coaching and seeing somebody teaching somebody to have success,” Palmer said.

Arizona hired Rich Rodriguez to replace Stoops, but Palmer wasn’t retained on the staff.

“RichRod really didn’t give me the time of day,” Palmer said. “Frankly, didn’t look at me in the eyes when I was trying to talk to him, so I realized it wasn’t a place for me at the time.”

Palmer’s coaching journey eventually led him to becoming the head coach at Monterey Peninsula College, a junior college in Monterey, California. With MPC two hours south of San Jose State, where Brennan coached, Brennan recruited several players from the junior college powerhouse.

“He’s passionate (and) he’s such a people’s person,” Palmer said. “I spent time around him while I was at the JuCo level. He was at San Jose (State) and he was always welcoming. He always had that door open for coaching clinics, for social (events), for practice, recruiting.”

Palmer was in charge of the MPC program from 2020-24, leading it to Gold Coast Conference Championships in 2021, ’22, ’23 and ’24. Palmer coached “everything from silver spoon kids to kids that are homeless in the (junior college) level.”

“Just to see that growth, hopefully kids can leave in a better state than when they came in,” Palmer said. “Now, all of a sudden, we’re here, back home in Arizona.”

The opportunity “to come back to such a prestigious program at this time, to me, was all about timing and good people, and Brennan is such a such a like-minded individual,” Palmer said.

“So after about four or five years of seeing him walk, talk and coach,” Palmer said, “I knew this was a unique and kind of a no-brainer opportunity to come back home.”