Brent Brennan: Arizona Wildcats out to build 'connection, that brotherhood' at fall training camp

Tuesday afternoon at Bear Down Kitchen in the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility felt like the first day of school.

It was the Arizona football program’s “report day” for fall training camp, with the first practice scheduled for Wednesday.

“We’re back and we’re excited to be back,” first-year Arizona head coach Brent Brennan said. “’Report day’ is always a special day — an exciting day — and here we go.”

The classroom — err, Arizona Stadium — had a few changes since the team took the field for the spring game over three months ago. The Wildcats officially removed the Pac-12 patches from the turf at Arizona Stadium, replacing those with Big 12 logos; Brennan’s backdrop for news conferences has also been updated to a Block “A” and Big 12 logo checkerboard pattern.

Those are details ahead of the Wildcats’ official Big 12 onboarding day on Friday and the UA’s season opener against New Mexico a month away in Tucson.

Brennan is still trying get out of vacation mode after spending the small window of free time this summer at Donner Lake in Northern California, a frequent vacation spot for three generations of the Brennan family and other families; Brennan and his wife, Courtney, got engaged at Donner Lake 24 years ago.

“It’s been 24 amazing years, according to me at least. Not sure what she would say,” Brennan said with a grin.

Brennan said Donner Lake “is a really special place to me and so I always look forward to getting a little bit of time there.”

“I wish I had a couple of more days on the lake,” Brennan joked. “Honestly, I’m excited to be back. I think the staff is and the players are. The players I talked to over the weekend, everyone is excited to get going. The cool thing about this job is there’s a specific — you know what’s coming, and as you start to get into late July, there’s more excitement, there’s more football on television, there’s more people talking about.”

There’s a buzz in Tucson heading into the upcoming football season for a variety of reasons. Arizona is coming off arguably its best season since the 12-1 season in 1998, after former leader Jedd Fisch and his staff rebuilt the UA from downtrodden program to a 10-win team in three years. Starting this season, the UA will also play in a new conference for the first time in over four decades as one of the Big 12’s four new members, and the Wildcats retained a majority of the roster and faces of the program despite a coaching change.

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“The best way I can say it is so many of these young men made the unpopular choice and unselfish choice, and they chose to stay together,” Brennan said of the player retention. “They made that choice for each other. Since I came on and post-spring practice, they all had 45 days where they could’ve chosen to stay or to go.

“Our players here are very special, because they chose to stay committed to each other, and that’s not happening a lot right now in college football,” he added. “From that perspective, I feel great about what we’ve learned over the last six months or so that we’ve been together. These guys love each other and they’re committed to each other, and that’s a great place to start with a football team.”

Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois told the Star earlier this month that new season ticket sales have increased by 40% this year and “there’s a lot of momentum from Coach Brennan’s hiring to the retention of core student-athletes through spring practice — and we can feel that momentum, you can feel that energy.”

Brennan said the excitement for the UA football program he’s inheriting radiates around Tucson. When he’s out grocery shopping or grabbing lunch at Chipotle, people often ask, “’You guys ready for the year?’”

“It starts building that momentum,” Brennan said. “That part of it is exciting. I’m excited that it’s August and we’re kicking it off. Let’s go.”

Following a summer of player-led practices and summer workouts with new strength and conditioning coach Cullen Carroll, “I feel great where we’re at, physically and mentally, going into the season,” Brennan said.

“I think we’re excited to get started,” he said. “It’s been a long year. The staff is excited.”

While Brennan has a foundation with his first Arizona team, between the tight-knit bond with the returning players and early enrollees from the transfer portal in the spring, Arizona is adding roughly three dozen new scholarship players to its roster. The final product of the UA football team in the inaugural season of the Brennan era will take shape at Dick Tomey Practice Fields and Arizona Stadium over the next month.

Brennan said Arizona’s focus “is trying to continue to build that connection, that brotherhood” at the start of training camp.

“But then there’s that physical component that you really haven’t been able to do with the consistency that you do in fall. This is the time where you start to build that,” Brennan said. “This is a team that comes together off the field and on the field.

“Those choices that those players make every day to get up and come together and do this again and put in the work together, it’s the most fun part about the football season — getting started and building a football team.”