Phoenix as a sports town? It has little to no identity.
The Suns are dreadful. The Diamondbacks lack relevance. Arizona State’s athletic program has been fair to middlin’ for 40 years. The Cardinals? They’ve had a thin five winning seasons this century.
The lead sporting event in Phoenix has long been the Waste Management Phoenix Open, which lasts a mere four days and spins on a boozy clambake at the 16th hole.
The city that gave us the Big Unit has become the Big Miss.
Except for this: the greater Phoenix area has become a hub of high school quarterbacks, a recruiting factory for the mega-powers of college football. The problem with this emerging story is that neither ASU nor Arizona has been able to share the wealth.
Look at the shiny lineup of Phoenix QBs this season:
• Oklahoma starting QB Spencer Rattler is from Phoenix Pinnacle High School;
• Oregon starting QB Tyler Slough is from Chandler Hamilton High School;
• USC starting QB Kedon Slovis is from Scottsdale Desert Mountain High School;
• No. 17 Iowa State starting quarterback Brock Purdy is from Gilbert Perry High School;
• Prized Ohio State redshirt QB Jack Miller is from Scottsdale Chaparral High School;
• Highly-sought Florida State freshman QB Chubba Purdy is from Gilbert Perry High School;
• The QB-in-waiting at BYU — Quarterback U — is Jacob Conover, a freshman from Chandler High School;
• Purdue sophomore QB Jack Plummer of Gilbert High School started as a freshman, throwing for 1,603 yards before breaking his ankle. He is working on regaining his health and the starting job.
I bring this to your attention because the Wildcats’ vulnerable and manpower-challenged defense must play against USC’s Slovis on Saturday afternoon, a week after Slovis threw two game-changing touchdown passes in the final four minutes to stun — you guessed it — ASU.
Home is no longer where the heart is.
Believe it or not, ASU hasn’t deployed a starting quarterback from the Phoenix metro area since 2001. That would’ve been Jeff Krohn of Scottsdale Horizon High School, the son of Jim Krohn, the only Tucson-raised QB to regularly start at Arizona since the 1940s.
Notice the trend?
I’m not suggesting there’s a bedeviling statewide curse at work here, but c’mon, the only UA starting QBs from this state in the last 60 years are Krohn of Amphitheater High School, 1978 and 1979; Phoenix Cortez High School’s Bill Demory, 1971 and 1972; and Chandler High School’s Eddie Wilson, 1960 and 1961.
Wilson is probably the top QB in Arizona history. He’s 80. Talk about being overdue.
After Wilson departed following a historic 8-1-1 season in 1961, Arizona has endured a long struggle to be relevant in football, unable to find a winning quarterback within the borders of the state.
It’s not that there weren’t any tempting options on Phoenix.
Danny White of Mesa Westwood High School became a legend at ASU in the early 1970s. Fred Mortensen of Tempe High School was at the wheel for some of Frank Kush’s juggernaut teams of the ’70s. White and Mortensen were succeeded by Phoenix Washington High School QB Mike Pagel, an 11-year NFL player born and raised in Douglas who never gave Arizona a sniff.
But once White, Pagel and Mortensen went off to the NFL, the Sun Devils were similarly shut out of the state’s big-name QBs: Brett Hundley of Chandler High School became a star at UCLA; future NFL starter Ryan Fitzpatrick of Gilbert Highland High School chose to play at Harvard; Mesa Mountain View High School’s John Beck became part of the BYU quarterback legacy and fellow Mountain View QB Joe Germaine helped Ohio State get to the Rose Bowl.
Perhaps the in-your-face moment of Arizona’s lack of QB tradition took place in 1989, when Bret Powers of Glendale Cactus High School, the younger brother of former Arizona starting linebacker Howie Powers, chose to play at ASU. When ASU broke “The Streak” in ’91, crushing an nine-year winless streak against Arizona, Powers was ASU’s starting quarterback.
Painful.
When USC’s Slovis arrives at Arizona Stadium this weekend, it won’t be anything like a return to familiar surroundings. He did not make a recruiting visit to Arizona; he wasn’t even offered a scholarship by the Wildcats before committing to play for USC in June 2018.
But at about the time Slovis joined the mass exit of Phoenix quarterbacks to out-of-state powerhouses, Arizona was making progress, at last becoming an active part of the Phoenix QB recruiting riches.
Gilbert High School’s Will Plummer picked Arizona over offers from Oklahoma State, Colorado and others. Saturday, he could make his first career start.
Kevin Sumlin’s staff pursued three-star QB Will Plummer — Jack’s brother and no relation to former Sun Devil QB star Jake Plummer — at Gilbert High School.
Oklahoma State and Colorado were also involved in the pursuit of Plummer, but this time — after all these decades — the Wildcats triumphed.
Will this young man named Will put a brake on the state’s quarterback exodus?
Will “home sweet home” soon apply to a new generation of Arizona quarterbacks?
Where there’s a Will, there may soon be a way.
