The Star's longtime columnist on how college football coaching exchanges (like that of Arizona and Washington this week) have changed over the decades, Rincon/University basketball coach Rich Utter reaching 500 wins, the amazing Abdi Abdirahman, 47, still thinking Olympics, and Arizona men's basketball's lingering check engine light.
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Greg Hansen is the longtime sports columnist for the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson.com.
UA, Washington coaching exchanges different today than in ’70s — but not for better
A few years ago, I was blessed to have dinner with former Washington athletic director Joe Kearney and his UW Hall of Fame football coach, Don James, both of whom had retired to Tucson and were living on the 13th fairway at Tucson National Golf Club.
I’ll never forget James telling me he was “Joe’s second pick to be Washington’s coach.’’
Who was first, I asked?
“Your Arizona guy, Jim Young.’’
Kearney, who went on to become commissioner of the WAC, told the rest of the story.
“During the 1974 season, (Washington coach) Jim Owens announced he was going to retire. I was impressed with what Jim Young was doing at Arizona (8-3 and 8-3 in his first two seasons,). So I called the UA athletic director, Dave Strack, and asked for permission to talk to Jim. I asked him to have Jim call me.’’
University of Arizona athletic director Dave Strack, pictured May 18, 1982, shepherded the university's entrance into the Pac-10 conference and hired Fred Snowden, the first Black basketball coach in Division 1. Strack, the former head basketball coach at Michigan, helped open McKale Center and watched as the UA developed into a regional power.
Such was the trusting nature of college sports in previous generations. An athletic director didn’t stealthily pull off an overnight raid and hire another team’s coach. He asked for permission to talk to him. Professional courtesy ruled.
A few years later, Young confirmed to me that Kearney was correct. Young modestly said he took job-related phone calls from, among others, Iowa, Texas Tech, Tulane, Purdue and Illinois during his Arizona days, but was still a bit miffed that Strack didn’t tell him about the call from Washington until two weeks after Kearney requested permission.
By then, Kearney had hired James away from Kent State. How’d it go? James was surely the No. 1 coach in Pac-12 history (1978-2023).
“I could never understand why Jim didn’t call me back,’’ Kearney said that night.
In his memoirs, Young wrote: “I went to Strack the next year (1975) and asked him if any school had called to inquire about me. This time, he said both Purdue and Illinois had called.’’
Young visited Purdue and became the Boilermakers coach, including successive seasons of 9-2-1, 10-2 and 9-3, followed by an impressive eight-year stint at Army, all of which led to his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999.
Now, almost a half-century later, Washington athletic director Troy Dannen used a behind-the-scenes, 21st-century model to poach Jedd Fisch from Arizona. Professional courtesy? What’s that?
It took Dannen about 24 hours to pitch Arizona’s football program into chaos. The dominoes fell. Over the next 48 hours, UA athletic director Dave Heeke successfully pulled off an overnight raid to hire San Jose State coach Brent Brennan. What else could he do?
I liked the old way better.
Before Fisch, Larry Smith was the last Arizona football coach to be poached. Unlike Young, his former boss at Arizona, Smith’s departure was not blocked by the AD.
When the ’86 Wildcats played Stanford in a made-for-TV, season-ending game — played in Tokyo a week after the famous “Chuck Cecil interception’’ game that beat ASU’s Rose Bowl team — USC athletic director Mike McGee flew to Tokyo to interview Smith about becoming the Trojans’ new coach. McGee did not hide and Smith did not bite.
Smith told McGee he wouldn’t make a decision until after Arizona’s Dec. 27 Aloha Bowl game against North Carolina State, that he wouldn’t leave his team without a coach. For a month, Tucson football fans stewed: was Smith staying or going?
If nothing else, Smith led the league in integrity.
Former UA athletic director Cedric Dempsey told me that Smith was so torn about taking the USC job that in a December afternoon meeting at Dempsey’s house, Smith broke down and cried.
Finally, after Arizona won the Aloha Bowl, Smith flew back on the team’s commercial flight back to Los Angeles. I was on the plane and watched as Smith, In full view of his team, exited the plane and was taken to USC to meet with school president James Zumbrege. USC offered Smith a five-year contract; he was working year-to-year at Arizona, per an antiquated Arizona Board of Regents rule.
How times have changed.
At a press conference in Los Angeles on Jan. 2, 1987, Smith, the new USC coach, said: “Had I a five-year contract, I would not be sitting here. It’s beyond me that Arizona didn’t offer me more than a one-year deal.’’ Finally, in the summer of 1987, the ABOR approved multi-year contracts for coaches. Call it the Larry Smith Rule.
I thought about that last Sunday afternoon when I stood outside the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility and watched Cecil, the UA’s secondary coach, walk into the building, uncertain of his future and that of Arizona football. His customary grin was gone; he stared at the ground.
Moments later, 38 years after Cecil watched Smith walk off that airplane at LAX, Fisch drove up to the west side of Arizona Stadium and quietly walked into the back door of the LSFF, out of the view of 10 or 15 media people and their cameras near the front door. It was a sneak attack.
About five minutes later, Fisch returned out the back door, got into his car and drove off into a purple haze.
Give me Larry Smith and Jim Young every time.
Rincon boys basketball coach Rich Utter, right, has some instructions for Dieumerci Byiringiro during the Rangers’ game last season at Tucson High School on Jan. 31, 2023.
Utter hits 500, and then some
On a memorable night in the mid 1980s, Rich Utter coached Rincon/University High School to three basketball victories in one day.
“Our freshman coach was back east at a funeral, and our varsity coach, Roland LaVetter, was sick, so I stepped in,’’ says Utter, who was then Rincon’s JV coach. “It was three games in about seven hours. We won ’em all, 3-0.’’
None of those victories are counted in Utter’s career total of 500 victories — No. 500 was added when the Rangers won at Sunnyside last Tuesday. But it does include the first two victories of his head-coaching career in 1980 at Valley Union High School, an isolated Class 1A school near Douglas.
Talk about an epic journey, 1 to 500.
“We went 2-19 that year at Valley Union,’’ Utter remembers. “The next year, I was hired as a volunteer coach at Rincon, but just before the season started, the JV coach left and I got his job.''
Over the last 44 years, 36 as Rincon’s head coach, Utter has become the most familiar face of Tucson prep basketball. He has gone 500-411. Reliable? He missed just one of those 911 games.
“Four years ago, I had kidney stones and missed the Mountain View game,’’ he says. Talk about endurance. For more than 25 years, Utter usually taught five school classes (math) a day. He worked the old AAU summer circuit through most of the 1980s and 1990s, one of the chief organizers of Tucson’s summer league teams.
Somehow, he endured a neck fusion surgery, a major lower back surgery, a shoulder replacement surgery, two knee replacement surgeries. He also had his gallbladder removed.
Through it all, Utter persevered. He has coached more boys high school varsity basketball victories in Tucson than anyone except the late Dick McConnell, a four-time state champion at Sahuaro.
Best finish? No. 2 in the 2006 state championship game.
Best tribute? Because Rincon isn’t in a basketball-rich neighborhood and doesn’t recruit open-enrollment basketball players, Utter has somehow won 500 games with just five Division I college players: Andy Brown, Devon Eason, David Jackson, Bill Morrison and Brendan Rumel.
Staying power? Since Utter replaced LaVetter in 1989, Rincon has employed 13 head football coaches.
What did Utter do to celebrate his 500th victory? He and his wife, NJ, drove to Phoenix on Saturday to attend the Eagles concert. Time to “take it easy,’’ right?
Abdi Abdirahman, of United States, competes during the men's marathon at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 8, 2021, in Sapporo, Japan. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Short stuff: Abdirahman, 47, eyes another Olympics; LIV golf gives up on Tucson
• At 47, Tucsonan Abdi Abdirahman has qualified to run in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials Feb. 3 in Orlando. That’s unprecedented for a man of his age, according to the USA Olympic archives. A five-time USA Olympian from Pima College and the UA, Abdirahman has been training at high elevation in Ethiopia this month and will return to Tucson next week. Fellow Tucsonan Nico Montanez has also qualified for the marathon trials. ...
• Arizona continues to struggle to get its once-prominent swimming program back to Frank Busch-levels of 1990-2011. Last week, the UA parted ways with assistant coach Lara Jackson, one of the leading swimmers in school history. Jackson had been an assistant on Augie Busch’s staff for 2½ years. In her UA career, Jackson won nine NCAA titles (two individual, seven relay) and had 14 All-American selections during a run that included Arizona’s 2008 NCAA championship. ...
• After last year’s poorly-attended LIV Golf event at the Gallery Golf Club on Dove Mountain, it was announced that LIV would return to Tucson in 2024 and 2025. But those plans have been erased. When LIV announced its 2024 schedule last week, the Tucson event had been replaced on the March calendar by events in China and Saudi Arabia. Can’t say it will be missed. ...
Danny Lee of Iron Heads GC gets a champagne shower after winning the LIV Golf Tucson at the Gallery Golf Club on Sunday, March 19, 2023.
• Alan Zinter was a consensus All-American catcher on Arizona’s 1989 Pac-10 championship baseball team. Since then, his career is like something out of the Bull Durham movie. Zinter, 55, last week was hired as the hitting coach of the Chicago White Sox. He previously held similar positions with the San Diego Padres, Houston Astros and Cincinnati Reds. Glad to see him back in the big leagues. Zinter played 14 years of minor league baseball, including three with the Tucson Sidewinders, and had just 84 MLB at-bats. He has coached in minor league stops that include the Visalia Rawhide, Mobile BayBears and Missoula Osprey. ...
• In 2023, Arizona became the second Pac-12 school in history to have NFL, NBA and MLB head coaches in the same calendar year: former Wildcat linebacker Antonio Pierce was the interim head coach (now full-time head coach) of the Las Vegas Raiders, former UA point guard Steve Kerr is head coach of the Golden State Warriors and ex-Wildcat outfielder Terry Francona (since retired) was manager of the Cleveland Guardians.
Cal is the only other Pac-12 school to duplicate that group. Ironically, it happened in the same year, 2023. as ex-Cal linebacker Ron Rivera was head coach of the Washington Commanders (he was let fired earlier this month), former Bears point guard Jason Kidd is head coach of the Dallas Mavericks and ex-Bears catcher Bob Melvin was manager of the San Diego Padres (he's now with the San Francisco Giants).
UCLA guard Lazar Stefanovic, left, gets a handful of Arizona guard Pelle Larsson, picking up the foul during the second half Saturday.
My two cents: Check engine light still bright on Lloyd's Wildcats
The “check engine’’ light illuminated Tommy Lloyd’s dashboard on New Year’s Eve as Arizona drove into a ditch and lost 100-82 at Stanford’s gloomy Maples Pavilion.
Since then, whatever work has been done in the shop hasn’t fixed the issue. Other than beating injury-riddled USC and Colorado teams, the Wildcats have all but taken a road to nowhere. What’s wrong? As UA president Robert Robbins might say, “it’s a vexing problem.’’
The UA’s once-admired fast break offense has become a huffing-and-puffing, pull-to-the-side-of the-road-clunker. It has shot less than 30% on 3-point shots in losses to Stanford (ugh) and Washington State (double-ugh) and an unsightly 23% in Saturday’s saved-by-the-bell 77-71 victory over UCLA.
More? Arizona’s defense hasn't returned from winter break.
Had not Oumar Ballo made 7 of his 8 free throw attempts and UCLA missed every shot in the final 3:44 Saturday, well, you get the picture. A special thanks goes to UCLA’s volcanic coach Mick Cronin, whose technical foul with 6:04 remaining led to a four-point play and gave Arizona its first lead of the game.
Thank you, Mick. Just when Arizona needed to be bailed out, you blew your cool.
On Saturday, the worst UCLA team to show up at McKale Center since Steve Lavin’s forgettable 10-19 team of 2003 — a team that lost to Cal-State Northridge a month ago — led the No. 12 Wildcats 32-13. The only way out was a lot of labor and a little bit of luck.
Said Lloyd: “The game felt like it took eight hours for me.’’
Alas, there is no outside help on the way. For Arizona to win the Pac-12, it must engineer a total basketball audit. Fix the rebounding. Fix the shooting. Fix the defense. Fix the coaching.
When Lloyd picked up a scorer’s table microphone for his post-game radio interview a few minutes after the game, some of the first words he used were “desperation’’and “we were a mess.’’
OK, maybe that’s going too far. But salvaging a victory over a historically bad UCLA team isn’t going to solve Arizona’s immediate needs.
“I’m going to get in the weeds tomorrow,’’ said Lloyd. He should bring some hip boots and a flashlight.
