If you search the many video highlights of Georgia’s celebration at January’s national championship football game, you’ll see Cameron Lemons and Kendel Bennett, who were part of the Bulldogs’ recruiting staff the last four seasons.
Three months later, Lemons and Bennett were wearing Arizona gear at Saturday’s spring game, newly employed by the Wildcats. They are part of the school’s unprecedented commitment to player acquisition. Is it working? Rivals.com ranks Arizona’s Class of 2022 recruits No. 1 in the Pac-12.
Surround yourself with winners, right? That has been Jedd Fisch’s method. It goes beyond hiring four ex-NFL coaches to his staff. A year ago, Fisch hired the UA’s head strength and conditioning coach, Tyler Owens, from national champion Alabama’s staff.
On Monday, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick visited the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility to meet with Fisch and his staff, and to talk to the Wildcat players. It’s a powerful recruiting tool.
Lemons, who is Fisch’s coordinator of recruiting strategy, and Bennett, who is the school’s new coordinator of on-campus recruiting, are part of an eight-person staff dedicated to recruiting, scouting, high school, community and player relations.
There can be little doubt that Fisch’s insistence on funding and developing a recruiting/relations staff twice as large as any in school history is making a difference. After going 1-23 the last 2½ years, a reasonable expectation for Arizona’s 2022 football team is now 3-9 or 4-8.
Or maybe 5-7 if you’re a dreamer.
Arizona’s crash into college football obscurity began in 2016. That’s when Rich Rodriguez hired his 1990s Glenville State coaching buddy, Dusty Rutledge, to be the UA’s director of high school relations, also charged with operating camps and clinics for potential Wildcat recruiting targets.
That’s a critical job, especially at a school that isn’t Oregon or USC, a school that can use all the insider relationships it can get in recruiting.
Rutledge had been a fringe member of RichRod’s staffs at West Virginia and Michigan, serving as a video coordinator and fundraiser. In the three years before he was given the very important job of creating recruiting relationships with hundreds of Arizona and California high schools football coaches, Rutledge worked for Barwis Methods, a holistic athletic and neurological training facility in Michigan.
Oops. That didn’t work. Today, Rutledge is the chief of staff for RichRod’s new team, the Jacksonville State Gamecocks. No surprise. One of RichRod’s failings at Arizona was to surround himself with those who weren’t a threat to him. That’s not the way Fisch does it.
Fisch brought in Super Bowl championship coach Sean McVay to headline the school’s annual coaching clinic. Can you imagine how many prep coaches from big-shot Phoenix football powers were in the audience that day? It all benefits recruiting.
UA coach Jedd Fisch has expanded Arizona’s recruiting, personnel and outreach departments in search of better players.
And it’s not just a person from Alabama here and another from Georgia there, Six weeks ago. Fisch hired Josh Omura as the UA’s coordinator of high school recruiting. Omura last worked in a similar capacity at Washington State and Hawaii. He knows the Pac-12 and Polynesian community footprint. Advantage, Arizona.
Arizona has gone a woeful 27-52 since winning the Pac-12 South in 2014. As much as it has been a case of playing bad football, it was all triggered by inconsistent and sometimes inept recruiting that began under Rodriguez and continued under Kevin Sumlin.
In 15 months, Fisch has changed the school’s recruiting infrastructure and insisted on professionalism and positivity. There’s no more “we’ll never get that guy” groan, prompting UA coaches to safely recruit a two-star prospect against Fresno State and Wyoming instead.
This year Arizona aimed high, successfully getting five-star receiver Tetaiora McMillan away from Oregon, to whom he had committed months earlier.
Fisch’s ability to recruit successfully has changed Arizona’s future from gloomy to hopeful. Every move in the school’s recruiting machinery seems to have made a difference. Last weekend, for instance, about 250 former Wildcats players attended spring game festivities, and it wasn’t just a bunch of Dick Tomey players reuniting for the weekend.
The outreach by Syndric Steptoe, Arizona’s senior director of player and community relations, and Brandon Sanders, coordinator of football alumni and high school relations, worked better than anyone could’ve expected.
Former UA and NFL player Brandon Sanders, now the Wildcats' coordinator of football alumni and high school relations, helped bring about 250 former ex-Wildcats back for Saturday's spring game.
The group of 250 covered 70 years of UA football, including 1970-72 starting quarterback Bill Demory, one of just three UA quarterbacks to ever play in an NFL game. It included early 1950s teammates Jim Guendelsberger and John Lowry, both outfitted in Fisch’s “It’s Personal” Wildcat gear for the spring game.
And it included Don Reynolds, a key running back/kick returner from Arizona’s 1968 Sun Bowl team.
Reynolds, who owned a large SoCal construction company before he retired, is wired to the football programs at talent-rich Mater Dei, Anaheim Servite and St. John Bosco high schools. When Fisch attended a Servite game last year, Reynolds introduced himself. He knew all about the Servite players Fisch ultimately signed — McMillan, Noah Fifita, Keyon Burnett and Jacob Manu — and became friends with Fisch.
Thus, Arizona now has a strong connection to three SoCal football factories where none previously existed.
As much as college football is becoming a big-money game, it remains foremost a game of recruiting. In that regard, Arizona is making progress with its priorities in order.
