Surviving an 0-4 start to a Pac-12 football coaching career โ to go forward and flourish, earn a second contract and ultimately break into the Top 25 โ is almost unprecedented.
It is not my purpose to rush to judgement on Jedd Fischโs 0-4 start at Arizona, but over the last 50 seasons only five men coaching at Pac-12 schools in their first permanent head coaching position opened 0-4 in their opening season.
Five were fired. Those five never had a winning season. None were ever FBS head coaches again.
But those are just numbers. My feeling is that Fisch will not become part of that group of failed coaches. He goes about his business in an entirely different manner than the 0-for-4 coaches of an earlier time.
Hereโs how it went:
- 1974, Utahโs Tom Lovat, a 36-year-old Ute alumnus who had been on the Utah staff for two years, opened 0-7 and finished 1-10. He was fired after Year 3 with a 5-28 record and spent the next 30 years as an offensive line coach.
- 1976, Oregon Stateโs Craig Fertig, once a star quarterback at USC who had been an assistant on John McKayโs Trojan national championship teams of 1967 and 1972, opened 0-5 at OSU. But Fertig was more like a talk-show host than a man who could rebuild the crumbling Beavers football operation. He went 10-34-1 and was fired after Year 4.
- 1980, Oregon Stateโs Joe Avezzano, said to be an elite offensive coordinator at Tennessee, opened 0-11 at OSU. He didnโt have a chance as the Beavers became Americaโs worst FBS program. He went 6-47-2 and was fired after Year 5.
- 1991, Oregon Stateโs Jerry Pettibone, who had been 33-32-1 as the head coach at Northern Illinois, bravely took on the massive rebuilding project at cash-strapped OSU. He opened 0-10 and was fired after Year 6, going a woeful 13-52-1.
- 2006, Coloradoโs Dan Hawkins, who had helped Boise State become nationally relevant, opened 0-6 in Boulder. Coaching a CU schedule โ against Texas and Oklahoma โ was a level of above his ability; he went 19-39 and was fired late in Year 5.
Coaches starting 0-4 in their first permanent Pac-12 coaching gig has been a precursor for failure in the past. Can Jedd Fisch change that historic trend?
But not all is lost. Although Oregonโs Rich Brooks didnโt start 0-4 in 1977, he did begin 1-9, and was only 4-18 after two years. But the Ducks hung with Brooks, in part because finally โ after eight straight sorry years โ the school had a winning season in 1979, finishing 6-5.
There was hope, which is all Oregon was looking for in 1979. It is all Arizona is looking for now.
Itโs not โshow me the moneyโโ as much as it is โshow me some progress.โโ
Forget that Brooksโ โ79 season was a bit misleading. The Ducks did not beat a team with a winning season, a group of pushovers who combined to finish 20-46-1. The Ducks of 42 years ago were simply looking for progress, too.
A year later Oregon went 6-3-2 and beat No. 8 UCLA, routed No. 13 Washington and tied No. 2 USC. That was Brooksโ fourth UO season. He was the rare coach to break through after a woeful start.
Iโm not suggesting that in 2024, Year 4, Fisch will go unbeaten against USC, UCLA and Washington, but even after losing to NAU and getting crushed by San Diego State, there is little reason to compare Fisch to Oregon Stateโs Fertig and Avezzano.
I was an up-close witness to the bottom-feeding nature of Fertig and Avezzano โ I lived in Corvallis and covered both men during their predictable failures โ and neither had Fischโs successful foundation, energy or resources with which to recruit better players.
Even more helpful, I also covered Brooksโ breakthrough seasons at Oregon, 1979 and 1980. Yes, that was 42 years ago, but Brooks was an organizational man, driven and determined, which is what Fisch has exhibited in his attempt to overhaul the mess he inherited.
At Fischโs weekly Monday press session Monday, there was no sense of impending doom. It was just the opposite.
โThe wins are going to come,โโ he said without prompt, and added โWe havenโt won enough games โ yet.โโ
โYetโโ is an indeterminate period in college football. At some schools, โyetโโ is brief. Even at Arizona it took just three seasons to jettison coaches John Mackovic and Kevin Sumlin. But both viewed the Arizona job with clear disdain: They had failed at Texas and Texas A&M, respectively, and arrived in Tucson not on Chapter 2, but on the last chapter of their head coaching careers.
Fisch is still on Page 1, Chapter 1 of his head coaching career.
I firmly believe that energy is much of the battle, two must-have elements that escaped Mackovic and Sumlin in Tucson. Those men were much more established than Mike Stoops, Arizonaโs head coach from 2004-11. But Stoops, a career assistant who inherited a situation far more bleak than the ones given to Mackovic and Sumlin, successfully worked through a pair of 3-8 seasons to start his head coaching career.
Stoops provided the energy, instinct and capable staffing that not only led to a total reconstruction of the UA football โ bowl games in 2008, 2009 and 2010 โ but left enough in reserve that his successor, Rich Rodriguez, used Stoopsโ talent to go 8-5 and 8-5 his first two seasons.
The big difference between Stoops and Fisch is that Stoops beat NAU in his opening game as a head coach. Most forget that he then was 1-7 before beating Washington in Seattle and then rallying to stun No. 18 Arizona State in the season finale.
The early numbers didnโt work for Stoops any more than they are working for Fisch. But this isnโt anything like Oregon State in the 1980s, which was outmanned, out-smarted, out-worked and out-spent.
On Monday, Fisch debuted the schoolโs new digital media center at the Lowell-Stevens Football Plant. His UA predecessors used to hold their weekly Q&A sessions in a cramped and almost claustrophobic room at McKale Center.
The spacious digital media center still has a new-car smell. Similarly, the warranty on Fischโs UA football program is still going through the break-in mileage stage.
