Arizona Wildcats legends eager to get started
Former UA star Ricky Hunley, UA President Robert C. Robbins, senior defensive analyst Chuck Cecil and Lamonte Hunley before Saturday’s game.
Are you kidding?
“Did you ask for No. 6?” I asked.
Cecil looked surprised, turned to look at the cart and saw the No. 6.
“I didn’t say a word to anyone,” he said.
It’s not Cecil’s personality to be a look-at-me type.
It had been 32 years since Cecil played his last football game at Arizona, and yet his legacy remains such that those working at TCC made sure the most famous No. 6 in UA sports history got the right golf cart. It’d be like Steve Kerr being issued No. 25.
Cecil returned to Tucson in the summer of 2017 after an Arizona Cardinals benefit golf tournament at which Cecil spent time with UA coach Rich Rodriguez. It was during a conversation in Phoenix that Rodriguez invited Cecil to be part of his staff — although not as an on-field coach — adding this bait: “If you come back, you can replace me when I leave.”
That’s a snapshot of the collapse of the UA football program. RichRod wanted to leave — he had been embarrassed by an awkward failed interview at South Carolina in December 2016 — and Cecil wanted to get back.
For a myriad of reasons, Cecil ended his 15-year career as an NFL assistant coach to return to Tucson and his alma mater. He was the most qualified defensive coach at the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility for the last four seasons, but he had no voice. He couldn’t recruit. Couldn’t coach on the field. And he wasn’t even paid half of what the other secondary coaches made.
It was all part of the trail to failure that Rodriguez and Kevin Sumlin followed. They surrounded themselves by non-threatening, low-profile, entry-level assistant coaches. Rodriguez hired a high school coach to pilot Arizona’s defensive line. Sumlin followed by hiring a junior-college coach for the same position.
That’s not recommended in a league with USC, Stanford and Oregon.
That’s not how it worked during the greatest decade of Arizona football, the 1990s, when Dick Tomey hired former head coaches Jim Young, Homer Smith and Bob Wagner — and rising stars, future head coaches Dino Babers, Rich Ellerson, Pat Hill and Rip Scherer — to help get the best out of a mid-level football school.
As promised, in his first week as Arizona’s football coach, Jedd Fisch quickly changed the direction of the program by hiring Cecil, fellow UA legend Ricky Hunley and Seattle Seahawks assistant coach Brennan Carroll to be part of a massive reconstruction job. Those men have a combined 29 years of NFL coaching experience.
In one week, Fisch bought in. He sought advice from Tedy Bruschi. He hired fellow UA Hall of Famers Cecil and Hunley. He somehow lured Pete Carroll’s son away from the NFL, but in doing so got more than a name. Carroll has been the recruiting coordinator at both USC and Miami.
Now when UA coaches visit the home of a coveted recruit, the prospect won’t have to ask his dad “who was that guy?”
Cecil played in the NFL’s 1993 Pro Bowl with Deion Sanders, Junior Seau and Jerry Rice. Hunley was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame a year before Bo Jackson. Carroll was a full-time coach on USC’s undefeated 2004 national championship team.
Hunley is so eager to return to the UA football program that he is driving from his Los Angeles home to Tucson on Sunday.
“I can’t wait to start recruiting,” he said. “I can’t wait to tell the (recruits) that Arizona is a destination, a place where you can make an impact right away.”
Which is what Jedd Fisch has done.
'Rock star' Margo Geer reconnects with Byrne
As she continues to train for the USA Olympic Swimming trials and, hopefully, the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Margo Geer is making time to be the head coach at Alabama.
If that sounds like an enormous responsibility for anyone, Geer has another idea. It’s not.
When she was a 27-time All-American swimmer at Arizona from 2011-14, one of the difference-making swimmers recruited by Frank Busch, Geer was named the 2015 Pac-12 Woman of the Year (encompassing all sports) and was a finalist for the 2015 NCAA Woman of the Year. She spent her years as an Arizona swimmer involved in community events, as a volunteer and mentor.
Last week, Greg Byrne, now the athletic director at Alabama, told me Geer “is a rock star.”
Geer, a 2015 World Champion and four-time Pan American Games gold medalist, won three NCAA championships at Arizona. She is only 28. I wouldn’t bet against her.
Still much to be decided after Arizona's self-sanctioning
Arizona’s decision last week to self-impose a one-year postseason ban for Sean Miller’s basketball team comes off as a bit misleading and confusing. The school did not say that it was just a first step in the accountability process. The way I interpreted it was that the one-year ban was meant to be proportionate to the violation — and that all the misdeeds were committed by coaches who have been dismissed from the program. In truth, there remains so much to be decided. Will the NCAA ultimately view the UA’s self-probation as an end-run, as an insult? Stay tuned.
Tucson's Jane Teixeira continues to rise in AD business
Before San Jose State football coach Brent Brennan was able to bring his team to Tucson for last week’s Arizona Bowl — a 34-13 loss to Ball State on a day SJSU was missing at least five starters related to COVID-19 variables — the Spartans went through perhaps the most difficult scenario of any bowl team. Six weeks earlier, they had to move their day-to-day training to Humboldt State, which is about 250 miles from the San Jose campus. That move was coordinated by Tucson native Jane Teixeira, a Santa Rita High School grad and all-city softball player who is now the athletic director at Humboldt State.
Teixeira appears to be a rising star in the AD business, one of the few Black women to hold that job in college sports. After leaving Tucson, Teixeira climbed her way up the sports administration ladder, earning a doctorate degree at Oklahoma and then working in sports administration at USC, Texas A&M and for the NCAA. Teixeira helped the Texas Longhorns to the 1997 Women’s College World Series. Keep an eye on her.
New UA football staff faces personnel challenge
In the lead-up to Saturday’s Fiesta Bowl, Oregon Ducks coach Mario Cristobal confirmed that the Ducks have 38 players who were ranked as four- or five-star prospects when they signed with Oregon. By comparison, Arizona had three players on its 2020 roster who were four-star recruits: receivers Drew Dixon and Boobie Curry and running back Nathan Tilford. That’s the talent gap the new UA staff faces.
The good news for Arizona is that receivers and running backs are available in abundance. Dixon and fellow receivers from Tucson Stanley Berryhill and Jamarye Joiner have chosen to transfer, which is unfortunate but not a big loss. None stayed long enough to develop into impact players, which is the key for a school like Arizona. Developing two-and three-star recruits is what makes programs like Arizona, ASU, Cal and Colorado winners.
Mark Lumley's legacy of softball success had humble beginnings
When Tucson emerged as one of America’s leading softball precincts, coach Mark Lumley’s Flowing Wells High School teams were at the center of the climb.
After graduating from Phoenix Central High School in 1973, Lumley attended the UA and went on to coach Flowing Wells to state championship games in 1993 and 1997.
Sadly, Lumley died last week in Waco, Texas, at 65. During a celebration of life video service for him last week, his best friend, Jim Morley, described Lumley’s climb from a single-parent, hard-scrabble upbringing — he was a newspaper delivery boy to help support his mother — and how that work ethic defined his coaching/teaching career.
Lumley saved enough money from his part-time jobs as a teenager to help give his mom a down payment for a house. Morley said Lumley grew up “in a shack” in Phoenix. From those beginnings, his career flourished.
An assistant coach at LSU and Baylor for 21 years since leaving Flowing Wells in 1998, Lumley had struggled with cancer for 13 years. He not only coached Flowing Wells to the 1993 and 1997 state title games, he was also the mentor for two of the leading Tucson coaches, any sport, of the last 20 years: Flowing Wells and Pima College head softball coach Armando Quiroz and Flowing Wells and PCC women’s basketball coach Todd Holthaus.
Lumley was a gentle soul, a humble man who recruited Flowing Wells’ Ashley Monceaux and Ironwood Ridge’s Robin Landrith to Baylor, where both became All-Big 12 players who reached the Women’s College World Series.
All of that led to quite a legacy.
My two cents: Four Tucson sports predictions for 2021
1. If college softball is played, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Mike Candrea made it his last season at Arizona. My prediction is that he will coach the Wildcats to the Women’s College World Series for a 24th time — the Wildcats appear good enough to win a ninth national championship. And then, at 65, Candrea may decide to take a deep breath and become a motivational speaker, conduct hitting/coaching clinics, play more golf and enjoy recruiting-free summers at his mountain home in Pinetop. He has sure earned a break.
2. Quarterback Grant Gunnell, who left Arizona and will enroll at Memphis, will flourish in a new offensive system. When Gunnell announced he would play for coach Ryan Silverfield at Memphis last week, he told an online recruiting site: “In high school, my coach gave me a lot of freedom, and he allowed me to make decisions at the line of scrimmage. I’m ready to get back to that, and I’m ready to get back to pushing the ball down the field. I think Memphis’ offense is going to fit me better than Arizona’s did.” Under offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone, both Gunnell and his predecessor, Khalil Tate, played with a tight leash. The best coaching strategy for Tate would’ve been, to an extent, to say “do what you do,” but Mazzone instead turned Tate into a pocket passer. Big mistake. Bigger mistake: Arizona is contractually obligated to pay Mazzone for the 2021 season; he was paid $600,000 in 2020.
3. Salpointe Catholic High School grad Bijan Robinson will enter the 2021 season among the five most-mentioned names in the Heisman Trophy scene. Robinson completed his freshman season at Texas with a rousing, 183-yard, three-touchdown performance in a 55-23 Alamo Bowl victory over Colorado. Robinson completed the year third in Big 12 rushing totals, and first in average yards per carry at 8.2 yards. It took Robinson four games to break into the Longhorns’ starting lineup, but once there he became a star. More to come.
4. As per his contract, Kevin Sumlin will collect $3.75 million, half of his payoff from the UA, this month. He will not tap into his Twitter account and send a message to UA football fans, saying “I enjoyed my time in Tucson and I regret that I couldn’t have worked harder, been more successful, left the program with a stockpile of talent and beaten ASU.” Nope. There will be no apology from Sumlin nor the man who hired him, UA president Robert C. Robbins.
