Greg Hansen: Inevitable or inaction? Arizona football losing Jedd Fisch was avoidable

In early November, I ordered two T-shirts, a pair of jeans and a golf pullover from the Tommy Bahama online store. I soon received an email receipt from a Hong Kong server that said the “estimated arrival time is about 25 days.’’

My still-missing package, lost somewhere on a slow boat from China, is the retail version of Arizona’s failure to sign football coach Jedd Fisch to a new contract.

The UA’s inaction, its failure to complete Fisch’s contract re-do, was like watching your house engulfed by fire and failing to get a hose.

Most schools in Power 5 football would do whatever it takes to keep a coach who rebuilt a program from 1-11 to 10-3 in what seemed like a few months. Arizona stepped into quicksand and took a seat.

It was all avoidable.

When Arizona beat UCLA late on a Saturday night, Nov. 4, I watched Fisch walk into the end zone to embrace Tucson property magnate Humberto S. Lopez of HSL Properties, one of the school’s key athletic donors and a regular on the sidelines at Arizona Stadium.

It wasn’t just a quick bro hug, but evidence that Fisch had spent time cultivating Lopez to help Arizona combat the financial disadvantages it faces against Washington, Oregon and USC.

Two days later, Arizona moved into the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2017. I’m told that, with Lopez’s generous donation, the UA then began a proactive course on rewriting Fisch’s contract and paying his 10 assistant coaches a rate more in line with the assistants at Pac-12 competitors.

And then, nothing. After two months of inaction, Fisch is coaching the Washington Huskies.

You could write a very long book, volumes dating 50 years, on how to avoid having your coach poached. I remember ASU’s breakthrough and ascent to the 1987 Rose Bowl when Sun Devil coach John Cooper sat at an interview podium and candidly talked about his weak contract situation.

“I want a five-year contract,’’ he said. “I only have a three-year handshake.’’

His athletic director, Charles Harris, was furious. “I won’t talk about contracts until the season is over,’’ he said. “He’s still got some business to do. He still has to recruit. It’s inappropriate now.’’

A year later, Cooper became the head coach at Ohio State.

Arizona could write a new chapter in that book. Title: How to lose a coach in the 2020’s financial climate.

If we’ve learned anything since 1987, it’s that you’d better be prepared to act quickly when the coaching carousel comes your way. That’s one of the reasons Arizona AD Cedric Dempsey was so effective in his decade in Tucson. When Kentucky offered Lute Olson its coaching job in 1989, Dempsey almost overnight put together a $100,000 package — 10 donors each giving $10,000 — to the Olson-stays-in-Tucson fund.

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Fisch isn’t the villain in Washington’s weekend raid. True, it was tasteless to appear in a video expressing his joy before even leaving his foothills home, but if there’s a villain, it is the slow-moving UA administration, although such a claim requires an asterisk.

In the worst timing possible, a perfect storm of financial issues clashed. Could UA president Robert Robbins, who was heavily involved in expediting coaching searches that hired Kevin Sumlin and Tommy Lloyd, possibly be as involved as normal given the school’s $240 million budget crisis?

The look of Robbins being involved in any financial decision would be met with a tsunami of protest.

Whoever is at fault, the UA’s football kingdom has been turned upside down. Can you picture quarterback-savior Noah Fifita wearing a purple No. 11 jersey at Washington next season?

Maybe Arizona AD Dave Heeke can work quickly and effectively, hiring a coach by mid-week before the transfer portal begins churning opt-out Wildcats. But there’s no clear and obvious choice — no win-the-press-conference coach on the market. Alabama and Washington have plucked the two most desirable coaches in the Class of 2024.

San Jose State’s Brent Brennan? He’s a meticulous recruiter, a Dick Tomey disciple, a good man, but he comes off more like a vanilla milkshake capable of stringing together 4-8 and 5-7 seasons. Why hasn’t anyone hired him after seven years at San Jose State?

Whoever the next coach is must be willing to adopt Fisch’s template for success: endless recruiting, tireless community outreach, the push to hire an elite coaching staff, the willingness to earn an endorsement from UA legends Tedy Bruschi, Rob Gronkowski, Chuck Cecil and Ricky Hunley, and, as a bonus, to be one of the most skilled play-callers in college football.

That’s a big ask. Is there such a coach available?

At 3:30 Sunday afternoon, I watched as former UA and NFL receiver Syndric Steptoe walked from the Davis Indoor Arena to the 50-yard line at Arizona Stadium. In Fisch’s purposeful decisions to populate his 39-man support staff with as many ex-Wildcats as possible, he appointed Steptoe to be his Senior Director of Player and Community Relations.

With Fisch’s blessing, Steptoe developed a flag football league for Tucson kids, 7-10. They practice and play every Sunday at Arizona Stadium. Fisch often spent his Sunday afternoons watching hundreds of kids and their parents play 5-on-5 flag football games, outfitted in Arizona jerseys, coached by UA players like Keyan Burnett and Jonah Coleman.

But on Sunday, Steptoe seemed distracted. He had a phone to his ear most of the afternoon. Can you blame him? Does he still have a job? Is he about to lose his family’s health insurance? Will the next coach see the value in paying the price to operate a kid’s passing league? Or will the next coach bring in his own Senior Director of Player and Community Relations?

Look, Fisch could be a pain in the backside. Rather than accept the resources available (or not available), he campaigned for a larger staff, for about $8 million in improvements in the still-new Lowell-Stevens Football Facility. He campaigned for more this, better that. He loved the spotlight.

Guess what? It worked.

Fisch’s departure is crushing. Putting out the fire may take years.

Hansen: Arizona football's compelling, charismatic Jedd Fisch is Star's top sports figure of 2023

Unlike his UA predecessors, Arizona football coach Jedd Fisch has shown that leadership is no longer about hierarchy and control. To Fisch, the Star's No. 1 sports figure of 2023, success is now measured by collaboration and empowerment.