The Star's longtime columnist also discusses UCLA's mismatched claims of priority on Bruins' move to Big Ten, UA baseball's Nik McClaughry rocketing to Padres' Triple-A, the Jim Mielke-Vern Friedli connection, sports journalist Armen Keteyian's trip to Tucson to chat up Jedd Fisch and more.
With 10 years as player, 14 as a coach, 'Desert Swarm'-era's Boyer most balanced UA NFL career
If you were watching as the New York Jets won last week’s Monday Night Football opener on a rousing overtime punt return, you might’ve recognized a familiar face celebrating in the end zone: Arizona Desert Swarm linebacker Brant Boyer (1992-94).
No ex-Wildcat has had as much balance in an ongoing NFL career — meaning both as a player and coach — as Boyer.
New York Jets special teams coach Brant Boyer, a former Arizona Wildcat now in his 24th year as either a player or coach in the NFL, talks to reporters at the team's training facility in Florham Park, N.J., on May 31.
Tampa Bay running backs coach Skip Peete, a Sahuaro High grad who played wide receiver for Arizona in 1981-82, is the longest-tenured with UA ties. He's in his 25th year as an NFL assistant coach. But in Boyer's case, of his 24 years, 10 came as a player in the NFL, which led to his induction in the Ring of Honor at Arizona Stadium. And he's since coached 14 years, the last eight for the Jets.
Skip Peete, then running backs coach with the Dallas Cowboys, warms up players before an October 2022 game against the Los Angeles Rams. Peete, former Arizona Wildcat and graduate of Sahuaro high school, is with the Buccaneers in 2023.
His endurance is almost unmatched for an ex-Wildcat, with Tom Quinn and David Fipp coming closest to Peete and Boyer. Quinn, a backup Arizona linebacker in the late 1980s, is now an assistant coach for the Tennessee Titans, his 17th NFL season. Fipp, the Detroit Lions special teams coach was a starting safety for Arizona in the mid-1990s; he's in his 16th year as an NFL coach.
What makes Boyer's run so remarkable: he's probably the last Wildcat you would’ve predicted to spend 24 years in any capacity in the NFL.
Dick Tomey and UA defensive coordinator Larry Mac Duff discovered Boyer playing at Utah’s Snow Junior College in 1991. His other scholarship offers were Fresno State and Oregon State. His home-state schools — Utah, BYU, Utah State and Weber State — passed on Boyer because he was labeled a step slow and not quite big enough. Indeed, Boyer had been a walk-on at Snow College, redshirting a year before he became team captain.
Before Arizona’s ’92 season, I asked Boyer why he chose Arizona.
“I want to play in front of 50,000 people and go to a bowl game,’’ he said. “That’s what brought me here.’’
Good timing. Boyer became a symbol of Tomey’s Desert Swarm teams, a defensive stopper, a middle linebacker who overcame his lack of size and speed. Incredibly, he was drafted in the sixth round of the 1994 NFL draft and used his grit and toughness to play a decade in the NFL.
Said Tomey: “He’ll rock you.’’
Boyer is so highly thought of in the NFL that he has been hired by the last three Jets head coaches, which is almost unprecedented. New coaches almost always hire “their guys.’’ But all saw something special in Boyer and, bingo, he was celebrating in the end zone last Monday night,
Boyer, Quinn, Peete and Fipp are part of 11 ex-Wildcats and Tucson high school players coaching in the NFL this season. The roll-call:
• Richard Smith, a Tomey assistant in the 1980s, is the Indianapolis Colts’ linebackers coach.
Former UA player Peter Hansen blocks a field goal attempt in the second quarter against Washington in 1999.
• Peter Hansen, an elite special teams player on Arizona’s 1998 and 1999 teams, is the linebackers coach of the Carolina Panthers.
• Kylan Butler, a reserve running back in the Rich Rodriguez years, is an offensive assistant for the Tennessee Titans.
• Antonio Pierce, an Arizona linebacker of the early 2000s and a former ASU defensive coordinator, is the linebackers coach for the Las Vegas Raiders.
• Tony Dews, a former Rodriguez assistant, is Tennessee’s tight ends coach.
• Chris Foerster, a Sabino High grad who played at Colorado State, is an offensive line coach for the San Francisco 49ers.
• Ron Gould, a Santa Rita High School grad who played at Oregon, is the running backs coach for the Los Angeles Rams.
UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond cites "better and earlier game times" as part of the reason for the Bruins' move across all sports from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten beginning in 2024.
Long, tiring road trips await UCLA’s athletes
UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond last week attempted to justify the Bruins’ jump to the Big Ten conference by saying it will benefit UCLA’s athletes.
Said Jarmond: “Part of the reason we’re going to the Big Ten is to have better and earlier game times. You’ve got to provide those opportunities for your student-athletes to get more exposure, especially in today’s NIL world.’’
What a bunch of bunk. It’s all about money for the UCLA athletic department. Colorado AD Rick George made similar comments about CU’s athletes when the school justified its jump to the Big 12. No one was fooled.
The well-being of college athletes has almost always been a low priority, and that goes back decades and decades. Arizona is a perfect example, dating to the 1930s.
In the UA’s 1939 football season, for example, Arizona scheduled road games at Minnesota and Marquette a month apart. To get to those faraway game sites, UA football players boarded a train on a Wednesday afternoon, stopped in Kansas City on Thursday to practice at Rockhurst College and arrived at their Minnesota and Wisconsin destinations on Friday afternoon.
FILE - UCLA celebrates after defeating North Carolina to win the NCAA college women's soccer tournament final in Cary, N.C., Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. Friday, June 30, 2023, marked one year since the Bruins and Southern California shook up the collegiate landscape by announcing they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024. Since then, UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond and coaches throughout all sports have been assessing their programs and how the move will affect operations, recruiting and more.
Imagine how much class time was missed. Imagine how worn out the UA football players were.
It got worse in 1941 when Arizona was able to schedule a road game at mighty Notre Dame.
The Wildcats and 50 UA boosters boarded five special train cars on a Wednesday. Because of floods near Liberal, Kansas, where bridges were washed out, their trip to Indiana took an extra eight hours. Unable to work out before the Notre Dame game, Arizona lost 38-7.
The Wildcats arrived back in Tucson late Monday, surely exhausted by the grind.
In the coming decade, athletes at Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington are going to have earlier start times on the East Coast, but getting to and from Rutgers and Wake Forest and other far-flung precincts will be reminiscent of Arizona’s 1939 and 1941 football teams.
Short stuff I: McClaughry Triple-A rated for Padres; Tucson sports icon Redhair remembered
• The two most exciting plays I’ve seen this baseball season were both by former Arizona shortstop Nik McClaughry. He stole home against Oregon State and Stanford in televised road games. The fearless shortstop — named the Pac-12’s defensive player of the year — is just 5-9 and maybe 155 pounds.
Arizona shortstop Nik McClaughry runs down a grounder in the gap that USC’s Bryce Grudzielanek beat out for an infield single in the first inning of the first game of a Pac-12 doubleheader at Hi Corbett Field in May. McClaughry was named the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year.
It was his aggressive nature that led him to be a 10th-round draft pick of the San Diego Padres. The Pads sent him to Single-A Lake Elsinore in the California League, where he hit just .253.
But McClaughry must’ve impressed the Padres. Last week, they promoted him to Triple-A El Paso. In his Triple-A debut on Friday, he hit a triple and stole a base. Next stop: the big leagues, circa 2025 or so. ...
• Sad to learn of the death of 1950s Arizona football player Jack Redhair, a starting offensive lineman who went on to become a successful attorney in Tucson for almost 50 years and the patriarch of one of Tucson’s leading sports families.
Redhair’s daughter, Banni Bunting, became a state championship tennis player at Canyon del Oro High School and an All-American on one of the UA’s best-ever women’s tennis teams. She was inducted into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame in 2021. Jack’s son, Mike Redhair, became a starting basketball point guard for Arizona State and coach Bill Frieder after being an all-city player at CDO.
Jack Redhair was a long-time member of the Tucson Conquistadores, further establishing his sports legacy in Tucson. He was 87. ...
Former University of Arizona baseball player Clark Crist stands in his Oro Valley office in 2004 while holding a bat given to him by major league player Kenny Lofton.
Short stuff II: The Crist-Lofton baseball connection; A Mielke-Friedli coaching friendship
• Two of the leading baseball players in Palo Verde High School history, Clark Crist and Jack Howell, completed another year in professional baseball this month.
Crist, the starting shortstop on Arizona’s 1980 NCAA championship team, finished his third season as manager of the Appalachian League’s Pulaski River Turtles. The highlight of his season was a reunion with ex-Arizona basketball point guard Kenny Lofton, who went on to become a six-time MLB All-Star outfielder.
It was Crist who recommended to the Houston Astros in 1989 that Lofton, who had only played two college baseball games at Arizona, be drafted. The Astros selected Lofton in the 17th round. He went on to get 2,428 hits and steal 622 bases in the big leagues.
“Kenny came to Pulaski for two days to spend time with our players and talk to them about baseball,’’ said Crist, who spent 30 years as a MLB scout for the Astros, Red Sox, Indians, Mets, Cardinals and Reds. “It was a special time for all the guys.’’
Howell, who played at Pima College and UA before an 11-year MLB career with the Padres, Angels and Astros, completed his second season as manager of the Single-A Tri-City Dust Devils in Spokane, Washington. The former Arizona Diamondbacks hitting coach has also been manager of the Single-A Burlington (Iowa) Bees in recent years. ...
Coach Vern Friedli of Amphitheater congratulates players as the clock winds down against Mesa High to win the state championship in 1979.
• When the most-winning high school football coach in Tucson history, Amphitheater’s Vern Friedli, graduated from the UA in the 1950s, he was close friends with Jim Mielke, who went on to coach Pima College to an NJCAA cross country championship and later become one of the most successful track coaches in Tucson history.
Friedli, who died in 2017, and Mielke, who died earlier this month, connected in a most enduring way.
Jim Mielke
“Vern had just graduated from the UA and couldn't find a job, so we decided he would continue on, get a master's degree, and we would take a break to drive to his hometown in Northern California ,’’ remembers Sharon Friedli, Vern’s widow. “After we arrived, we got a call from my mom. Jim had left a message for Vern: if he could get back the next day, he could interview for the vacant Sunnyside Junior High coaching job.’’
Friedli hustled back to Tucson, interviewed, and got his first coaching job, at Sunnyside. The rest is history.
My two cents: Fisch shows more than one way to build a football program
Armen Keteyian, a long-time sports journalist for ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS and others, was in Tucson last week to interview UA football coach Jedd Fisch for Keteyian’s next book, “The Price.’’
Said Keteyian: “Jedd has got it going. Charismatic. Inspirational. A man with a plan.’’
Renowned sports journalist Armen Keteyian (pictured in 2013 while promoting some of his television work for “60 Minutes Sports” on Showtime), was in Tucson last week to interview UA football coach Jedd Fisch for his next book, titled “The Price.”
Keteyian could’ve bought into a low-hanging fruit book about college football, about Deion Sanders, but he instead saw that Fisch has created another way to be successful in college football.
Fisch isn’t old school, which is refreshing. He’s establishing a new way to coach college football. He’s a promoter, a connector, a new-style head coach who involved himself in community relations as much as with X’s and O’s, a man unafraid to surround himself with names bigger than his own — hiring well-qualified ex-Wildcats Chuck Cecil, Ricky Hunley, Brandon Sanders, Tedy Bruschi and Duane Akina — for the greater good of the program.
He is a fearless recruiter, stepping into high-profile territory previous UA coaches wouldn’t touch.
Fisch built his career on two decades of studying under the top names in the game, from Steve Spurrier to Bill Belichick, paying the price for 20 years as an assistant coach. He arrived in Tucson with a new script, not an old-school pedigree, which is just what the UA needed.
That’s what Keteyian sees. In a sport where recycling old coaches has been the No. 1 way of doing business for 50 years — such as hiring failed coaches like John Mackovic, Rich Rodriguez and Kevin Sumlin — Keteyian surely sees Fisch as the anti-Deion.
No one said there was only one way to build a college football program.
VIDEO: Arizona football coach Jedd Fisch, on Sept. 14, 2023 prior to the team's Sept. 16 game against UTEP, said about quarterback Jayden de Laura: “Yeah, he makes wild plays, but I tell him: ‘You don’t need to be Superman, just be Batman. Use your tools.’” Video by Justin Spears/Arizona Daily Star
