Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Arizona Wildcats make a national splash by hiring DeMarco Murray

Murray a big addition for Wildcats in recruiting department

A few days after Arizona hired John Mackovic as its football coach in 2001, I got a call from ex-Wildcat All-Pac-10 running back Vance Johnson, a three-time Super Bowl receiver for the Denver Broncos.

“I want to coach at Arizona,” he said. “Can you put in a good word for me?”

But because Johnson did not earn a college degree, he was unable to return home — he played high school football at Cholla — and start a new career path.

At any football school in America, even Alabama or Clemson, the hiring of an NFL star like Johnson, or new UA running backs coach DeMarco Murray, would be a coup.

There are few celebrity assistant coaches in college football; it is a game largely coached by old linebackers and safties, and the Pac-12 is a worthy example.

The most accomplished NFL player to coach in the Pac-12 was Ken Norton Jr., a 1987 consensus All-American at UCLA. Like Murray, Norton was a three-time Pro Bowl player, with three Super Bowls to his credit, not to mention being the son of boxing’s Ken Norton, who famously broke Muhammad Ali’s jaw and beat him in a famed 1973 fight.

Norton coached at rival USC from 2004-09, Pete Carroll’s glory days, and has since been coaching in the NFL.

Murray, who turns 31 next month, will coach running backs at Arizona. That’s almost a minor part of the deal. Who can’t coach running backs? Even a high school freshman knows the difference between hitting the 2 hole and the 3 hole. Pass blocking? How tough can it be?

Essentially, Murray will coach four players at Arizona. His real value is in recruiting, mentoring and team bonding as much as anything. He is a big personality. More so, his name is still known to high school recruits. As recently as 2014, Murray delivered one of the great seasons in NFL history, rushing for 1,845 yards and catching 57 passes. He retired from the NFL a year ago.

His away-from-the-game impact is that he was an accomplished student as an Oklahoma All-American, and four times a Big 12 All-Academic team player, earning a communications degree with a double minor in African-American studies and business.

That should turn the heads of parents of would-be Arizona prospects.

Over the years, Arizona has employed two ex-Wildcats who were accomplished NFL players: secondary coach Randy Robbins and defensive line coach Joe Salave’a. Until Murray was hired, the most successful NFL player to coach at Arizona was secondary coach Johnnie Lynn, part of Dick Tomey’s first Arizona staff; Lynn remained in Tucson to the Desert Swarm years and then coached 24 years in the NFL.

The most high-profile college player to coach at Arizona was Josh Heupel, who, like Murray, was an Oklahoma Sooners standout, finishing second in the 2000 Heisman Trophy balloting. Now the head coach at Central Florida, Heupel began his full-time coaching career at Arizona in 2005, leaving a year later to go back to OU where his career skyrocketed. While back in Norman, Oklahoma, he coached a young DeMarco Murray.

More to the point of Arizona’s coaching staff, the Tucson football community might’ve reacted with more enthusiasm if Kevin Sumlin had announced a change in the way Arizona will coach senior quarterback Khalil Tate.

In 2018, Sumlin and offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone implemented a scheme that didn’t take advantage of Tate’s skills. We’ll probably never know how much of that was on Tate — was it questionable play-calling or Tate’s inability to execute the plays? — but either way the UA needs to seize the opportunity and maximize Tate’s abilities in 2019. That’s coaching that matters immediately.

Winning the reeling Pac-12 South Division is no one’s idea of an impossible mission in 2019. The addition of Murray and the potential for him to relate to NFL-hopeful players like Tate should only improve Arizona’s chances to get to a Rose Bowl.

High school soccer, hoops among January's sports highlights

If you get any type of cabin fever in January, here are two recommendations for get-off-the-couch, must-see sporting events:

1. Sunnyside at Salpointe Catholic, boys soccer, 6 p.m. Thursday. Coach Casey O’Brien’s Blue Devils are probably the best team in Tucson sports at the outset of 2019. They are ranked No. 1 in Arizona, 15-0-1 overall, led by three senior standouts: Adrian Virgen, Manny Quiroz and Ulysses Torres-Palacios. Those three have combined for 42 goals as Sunnyside seeks to become just the fourth Tucson boys soccer team to win an undefeated state title in history, joining Wolfgang Weber’s 16-0 Salpointe team of 1985, a 17-0 CDO club of 2010 and the 24-0-3 Tucson High 2014 state champions. Believe it or not, Sunnyside is ranked No. 5 in the nation entering Thursday’s game.

2. Sahuaro vs. Sabino, girls basketball, 6:30 p.m. Jan. 21. It’s the featured game of the MLK Classic at McKale Center. Sahuaro is 15-1, ranked No. 3 among all of Arizona’s girls basketball teams, led by sophomores Alyssa Franke, averaging 14.4 points per game, and college prospect Alyssa Brown, averaging 22.3. By the MLK tournament, Sabino will be able to deploy transfer Kiya Dorroh, a 6-foot-1-inch sophomore who has already received scholarship offers from Arizona, Arizona State, Tennessee, USC and Ohio State. It wouldn’t be much of a shock if Sabino goes on to win the state Class 3A championship — and if Sahuaro wins the 4A state title.

Roman Bravo-Young loses first college match

After 3½ years, Sunnyside High School alumnus Roman Bravo-Young lost a school-season wrestling match. The Penn State freshman, who went 182-0 at Sunnyside, finished third in last week’s Southern Scuffle in Chattanooga, Tennessee, losing to Austin Gomez of Iowa State. A year ago, Bravo-Young and Gomez were ranked as top-10 wrestling recruits nationally. Competition in college wrestling is so intense that after Gomez beat Bravo-Young, he lost the championship match to another freshman, Dayton Fix of Oklahoma State, who went 168-0 in his high school career. Bravo-Young is 12-1 for the No. 1 Nittany Lions.

Jeff Scurran Sabino product hired at Georgia Tech

Jeff Popovich was one of Tucson’s leading high school football players of the 1990s, helping Jeff Scurran’s Sabino Sabercats to a state championship and then establishing himself as a key part of Miami Hurricanes national powers. Popovich last week was hired to be the special teams and cornerbacks coach at Georgia Tech. He had coached Boise State’s secondary in 2018 after spending two years under Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano.

Doug Pederson, meet Nick Foles

My former Star colleague Zack Rosenblatt, now a Philadelphia Eagles beat writer for NJ.com, wrote a terrific piece on Nick Foles last week, tracing Philly’s interest in the quarterback to his senior year at Arizona. The Eagles were the only NFL team to send a coach — current Philly head coach Doug Pederson, then an assistant — to Tucson to evaluate Foles and get to know him. Pederson discovered what UA fans learned from 2009-11: Foles is a man of character, a good teammate who was the feel-good story of the 2018 Super Bowl.

Tennis returns to Tucson at Westward Look

In the 1970s, Tucson became a stop for the world’s leading tennis players, from Chris Evert to Martina Navratilova. They played in WTT and L’eggs World Series of Tennis events at the Tucson Racquet Club and the TCC. Next weekend, the men’s ITF World Tennis Tour will be in Tucson to play at the Westward Look Pro Tennis Classic. The $25,000 event, which will go from Tucson to China, France, Spain and Tunisia, includes Tucson’s leading pro tennis player, Mitch McDaniels of Salpointe Catholic High School and the University of New Mexico. McDaniels is one of 20 players in qualifying competition, hoping to get a spot in the 32-man singles field.

Levi Wallace no cupcake in NFL

In the final Pro Football Focus (PFF) rankings of the 2018 regular season, Bills cornerback Levi Wallace ranked fifth among all players at his position in grading, a combination pass and run defensive efficiency ratings. Wallace, a Tucson High grad who walked on at Alabama, took 415 snaps after becoming the Bills’ starter in the final six games. Wallace was paid the NFL minimum $525,000 this season, and is under contract for similar payment in 2019. He would become an unrestricted free agent a year from now.

Larry Scott hires PR agency in crisis management ploy

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott took yet another blow to his image last week when The Oregonian reported he hired a big-money PR agency, FleishmanHillard, as a crisis management ploy. That’s the same firm hired to help re-do USA Gymnastics’ image after Larry Nassar’s sexual-abuse scandal. Wrote The Oregonian: “The Pac-12 brand isn’t broken because of public perception. It’s busted because of results.” I doubt Scott’s employment will be terminated as long as ASU president Michael Crow remains the de facto commissioner of Pac-12 athletics.

CDO grad racing toward Olympic trials

Canyon del Oro High School grad Jaide Stepter continues to work toward the 2020 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials. She is ranked No. 6 in the USA and No. 10 in the world at 400 meters as she enters the 2019 season. Stepter won six state championships at CDO in 2011 and 2012 before becoming a Pac-12 champion at USC.

Former Catalina football coach Ev Nicholson dies

The football field at Catalina High School is named after Ev Nicholson, a UA standout on the defensive and offensive lines in 1955  and a key blocker for the great Cactus Comet, Art Luppino.

Nicholson died in Tucson last week. He was 88. A celebration of his life will be held Feb. 3 at 3 p.m. in the clubhouse at the Randolph Golf Complex.

Nicholson, who grew up in Fremont, Texas, and served four years in the Navy, arrived at Arizona in 1954. Upon graduation from the UA, he became a TUSD teacher and coach for 31 years. He coached Catalina to a 7-3 record in 1974, which remains the best record at the school dating to 1967. He coached CHS football for six years, became the school’s athletic director and was also Catalina’s head wrestling coach.

Nicholson Stadium has been in use for almost 60 years.

My two cents: RichRod, favorite assistant will reunite at Ole Miss

Rich Rodriguez accepted a three-year contract for an estimated $2.7 million to become the Ole Miss offensive coordinator last week. That makes him one of the 25 highest-paid assistant coaches in college football.

That’s a good landing spot for RichRod, and it should give him a chance to work to his strengths. He is an expert offensive game-planner and play-caller. As Arizona discovered, he’s probably not the man you want as a head coach. His old-school demeanor is, thank goodness, being flushed out of college sports bit by bit.

RichRod immediately arranged for Ole Miss to hire Calvin Magee to be part of his offensive staff. When RichRod was fired last year, Magee became New Mexico’s offensive coordinator.

Strange, but in RichRod’s six years at Arizona, I never heard him mention any assistant coach except Magee in a press conference setting. He said multiple times that Magee was “the best running backs coach in the game.”

It’s not like getting the old gang back together — those days fractured long ago — but at 55, RichRod and his favorite associate get a fresh start together.

RichRod’s offense will be expected to score prolifically; the Rebels were 113th nationally in points allowed last year (36.1) and lost 62-7 to Alabama.

In late September, Ole Miss plays at Alabama, where RichRod and the man who hired him, Greg Byrne, will be reunited.