Brent Brennan, Cats wisely investing in process after ugly ’24 outcome | Michael Lev

Trust the process.

You’ve undoubtedly heard this phrase in the context of sports over the past decade-plus. It began with former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie’s long-term plan to rebuild the franchise from the ground up in the mid-2010s — acquiring draft picks, accumulating assets and not worrying about the team’s win-loss record.

The concept became almost ubiquitous in sports front offices. I’ve also heard coaches, especially in baseball, use that language: Process over results. If you keep doing the right things — again and again and again — eventually the results will come.

The Arizona football team lost sight of that objective a year ago. Brent Brennan acknowledged as much in his opening remarks heading into training camp. He used the word “outcome” instead of results. Same difference.

“Last year we killed ourselves with outcome focus,” Brennan said. “But that can’t be who we are now. We have to be worried about today. What is the compliance meeting going to be like this afternoon? We’re going to kick ass in that meeting. Then we’re going to move on to the next meeting, and we’re going to dominate that meeting.

“We’re going to focus on all these small parts as we build our program, day in and day out through training camp, so that when we get to the Hawaii game, we will have incredible momentum and be ready to attack that moment at that time.”

This is a prudent play by Brennan, who doesn’t really have an alternative. Unlike a year ago, there’s no lofty, predetermined goal for the 2025 Wildcats. There’s no 10-win season to try to replicate.

Those expectations turned out to be an unbearable burden for the ‘24 Cats. They put everyone — players, coaches, media, fans — in the wrong headspace.

So much emphasis was placed on what Arizona was supposed to do and who it was supposed to be. Too much emphasis was placed on the destination — the Big 12 championship, the expanded College Football Playoff — at the expense of the journey.

“The world we live in today ... everybody’s for the instant gratification,” senior defensive end Tre Smith said. “Anything worth having is not going to come that quick. If you’re always focused on the outcome, you’re going to miss the entire journey, which is the most important piece. That’s why you live every day.”

Rediscovering joy

Somewhere along the way — as early as early September — the 2024 Wildcats lost their sense of joy. It’s easy for that to happen when you’re losing almost every Saturday. Brennan said it happened even when Arizona was winning.

“Even the games that we won didn’t feel good to the players,” he said. “‘We didn’t win by enough. We didn’t play well enough on this side of the ball.’”

The ‘24 opener against New Mexico was a showcase for the offense, a calamity for the defense (although we didn’t know at the time that Devon Dampier would become one of college football’s most productive dual-threat quarterbacks and a highly sought-after player in the transfer portal). Week 2 against Northern Arizona was the opposite: Offense bad, defense good.

The final margin was just 12 points. The Wildcats were favored, at kickoff, by 37.5. They were supposed to throttle the Lumberjacks. Instead, they just scraped by.

“I think we got a little down on ourselves, just focusing on what we could have done,” senior defensive back Treydan Stukes said. “We had hoped to win those games by more than we did. That negativity just crept into the locker room. You could feel it. It didn’t feel like you just won a football game. It was like a relief: ‘Oh, we were supposed to win. And thank goodness we did.’”

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Those of us in the media pointed out the team’s deficiencies at the time. That’s our job.

The coaches’ job is to make sure the players block all of that out and focus on what’s important — the process and the journey. They failed in that regard, in Brennan’s estimation.

“And then when we did lose a game,” he said, “it was incredibly devastating.”

Much time was spent, Brennan added, “working with our team, talking with our team, trying to pull us out of the funk that that put us in, just because we’ve been so focused on something so far down the road.”

One step at a time

The mindset has changed this offseason, in part because those inflated expectations no longer exist. No one thinks much of Arizona.

The other part is how Brennan and his staff are approaching the day-to-day operation — by literally taking it day by day, meeting by meeting, practice by practice, rep by rep.

“Last year we got a little too outcome-biased,” Stukes said. “We were seeking out a double-digit-win season. We wanted to do all this stuff and thinking that only winning games was the way to do it.

“But it really comes in the work — all the work in the week before the game, all the work in the spring before the season. He (Brennan) has been nailing that point in since January. So I think guys this year have done a much better job of just being where their feet are, locking into what we have today, in this moment. And if we can do that for this whole camp, I think we’ll have a good chance going into the year.”

Said Brennan: “The only way to get right is by doing the work that is required right now. ... The great thing about this team is how they’ve attacked the work. I’m not just talking about football. We had the highest team GPA in the history of Arizona football this last semester. They’re on it.

“All parts of our program are firing on all cylinders because these players are so committed to each other and they’re so committed to the process.”

The failures of 2024 provided a needed reminder that the effort you put in from January through July is what leads to success from August through November. We put such a bright spotlight on Saturdays during the season, but Sunday through Friday is when the real work takes place.

Defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales wants each of his players to be “an everyday guy,” redshirt-sophomore defensive end Dominic Lolesio said. That means coming into work every day with “juice and energy,” he said.

Trusting the process. Embracing the process. Even ... loving the process?

“I do believe,” Lolesio said, “that if you do fall in love with the process, it’ll love you back eventually.”

We’ll see what the win-loss ledger looks like at season’s end. For now, no peeking. It’s all about the next meeting, the next practice, the next rep.