Arizona football coach Jedd Fisch and about 20 staff members went on a walking tour of the UA campus a few days ago. Fisch arranged for a photograph, tweeted the image and tagged five UA grads: Steve Kerr, Tedy Bruschi, Nick Foles, Rob Gronkowski and NBC studio show host Savannah Guthrie.
Fisch’s list of five was predictable.
You can make a strong case that those five Wildcats have the highest name recognition nationally among Tucson sports figures. Those five are still current, still hot, still in the American public mind.
Who’s No. 1?
Gronk. No contest. Gronk all day long.
Yet if you asked long-time Tucsonans to rank the city’s most historic athletes and coaches, the list would probably go like this:
Lute Olson.
Steve Kerr.
Sean Elliott.
Bob Baffert.
Kerri Strug or maybe Bruschi.
No Gronk on that list.
I bring this to your attention because Gronkowski might be playing his last football game Sunday at Super Bowl LV. He is only 31, but the Gronk of 2021 is not the Gronk of 10 years ago.
In 2011, Gronk broke into the nation’s sports consciousness with such impact that the average football fan surely asked, “Where did this guy come from?”
The answer: Arizona, not Alabama or Ohio State. People had to wonder how Arizona ever got a talent of Gronk’s stature, and why he only caught 77 passes in two UA seasons and never made the All-American team.
Gronk was often injured and played only his freshman and sophomore seasons. The Wildcats didn’t have enough time to truly grasp what they had. Teammates Mike Thomas and Delashaun Dean both caught more passes than Gronk did in 2008, his final college season.
Tight end Rob Gronkowski was Arizona’s only first-team all-conference player from the highly-touted class of 2007.
When Gronk plays for Tampa Bay in Sunday’s Super Bowl game — his fifth Super Bowl — you will not be seeing anything like the younger version of Gronk.
Ten years ago, 2011, he caught 90 passes for 1,327 yards and 17 touchdowns.
This year, he has caught 45 passes for 623 yards and seven TDs.
For anyone else, that would be a productive season. For Gronk — who retired following the 2018 season before returning to join ex-Patriot teammate Tom Brady — it was further indication he is close to the end of a first-ballot Hall of Fame career.
We’re gonna miss ya, Gronk. He is immediately recognized on the nation’s vast sports landscape. What a name. Gronk. It’s like something out of Hollywood — maybe “Caddyshack” or “Bull Durham.” If his name had been, say, Robert Grimaldi, there would be nowhere near the fuss.
Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski, right, will play in Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs. The former UA Wildcat has been one of the NFL’s most popular stars since he joined the league in 2010.
Gronk has paired his engaging personality and milked his name recognition to such benefit that the Boston Globe reported he has earned about double his total NFL salary, estimated at $61 million, in endorsements and off-field projects.
Despite his national popularity and immediate name recognition, Gronk’s career might not be first among UA and Tucson pro athletes. Here are the top non-Gronk contenders:
- Annika Sorenstam. The LPGA Tour’s No. 1 career money winner ($22.5 million), with 72 tour championships and 10 major victories. She was the NCAA player of the year at Arizona, 1992, and won back-to-back LPGA events at Randolph Golf Course, 2001 and 2002. She is the only women’s golfer to shoot 59 in an LPGA event, and the only female golfer
- to play in a PGA Tour event in the last 60 years..
- Bob Baffert. The Nogales native, a UA grad, is probably the most successful thoroughbred race horse trainer in history. He has trained six Kentucky Derby winners, seven Preakness champions and trained horses that won the 2015 and 2018 Triple Crowns.
- Steve Kerr. Keeping count of Kerr’s basketball accomplishments almost requires a calculator. At Arizona, he was part of two Pac-10 championship teams and a Final Four team and a rotation player on the 1986 World Championship team. As a pro, he played on five NBA championship teams and now has coached the Golden State Warriors to three NBA titles. In the middle of all t
- hat, he was the lead TV analyst at the Final Four.
- Jim Furyk. A starter on Arizona’s 1992 NCAA championship men’s golf team, Furyk is the No. 3 money winner ($72 million) in PGA Tour history. He has won 17 tournaments and two PGA Tour Champions titles, including the 2003 U.S. Open.
- Trevor Hoffman and Terry Francona. You can debate whether Hoffman, a former UA shortstop who was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame as perhaps the game’s top relief pitcher ever, or Francona, who managed the Boston Red Sox to historic World Championships in 2004 and 2007 — and was the NCAA player of the year as an outfielder on Arizona’s 1980 national championship team — surpass Gronk’s career. It’s too close to call.
And what about Strug? Does her gold medal-winning vault at the 1996 Olympics — surely the most famous single gymnastics performance in American history — push her into Gronk territory?
Who knows? It doesn’t matter. But it will forever be an honor to include Gronk in the conversation.
