The University of Arizona Alumnus / Fall 2009
Not so edgy
A grueling, five-year learning curve leads to redemption and hope for Arizona footballby Tom Danehy
It was nothing less than iconic, that shot of University of Arizona head football Coach Mike Stoops standing before the cameras, tears rolling down his cheeks. They could have been tears of joy, what with the long-suffering Wildcat football team about to play in its first bowl game in a decade (remember, the tears came before Stoops’ Wildcats dismantled BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl). But the coach recalls them differently.
“Those were tears of redemption,” he says. “After all those years of tough losses, near-misses, and second-guessing; all the agony, pain, and hurt just got washed away. It was an acknowledgment that something had finally gone right, that we had accomplished one of our goals, and we had done it the right way. Five years of hard work had paid off and it was just a release of a lot of things that had built up inside of me.”
Stoops is sitting on a couch in the office of Todd Judge, owner and operator of the Fitness Institute of Tucson. Judge has just put the coach through a grueling one-hour workout, but Stoops, who is in almost sickeningly good shape, has recovered quickly. Heartrate back to normal, he is all smiles when reminded that George Bernard Shaw always said that he felt better having written than having to write.
“Hey, I love this workout. It helps me get out of McKale and out into the sunshine two or three times a week and it gets me invigorated.” Those who know Stoops say that he never lacks for vigor, but after the breakthrough 2008 season (which saw the ’Cats go 8-5, beat ASU, and win a bowl game), that vigor has undergone a subtle, but not insignificant change. He’s not quite so edgy, so jumpy; he’s somewhat more comfortable, and while, in calculus terms, he only approaches calm as a limit, at least he’s heading in that direction.
“In life, as in coaching, it’s a learning experience. The successful ones try to duplicate the positive experiences and eliminate the negative ones. It was a grueling, five-year learning curve, but I think we got it.”
Sticking with the calculus theme, Stoops, in his first year, came oh-so-close to morphing that maddeningly slowly rising learning curve into something that looks like the graph of y=x squared, with a tangential slope in the high four figures. (Hey, this is a magazine for college alumni!) In his first year at Arizona, Stoops suffered through a brutal 9-7 home loss to a nationally ranked Wisconsin team (in a game that was suspended for more than an hour by a lightning storm) and then, the next week, watched as his squad coughed up the ball and the lead to Washington State in the last minute of the game.
“Yeah, those games are still fresh in my memory. I suppose if we could have won those games, we would have made a big (national) splash. Maybe we would have been off to the races, maybe not. All I know is that there is a process that has to take place. Along the way, you may win a couple games that maybe you shouldn’t have or lose a couple games you think you should have won, but all along, there has to be a process in place. I look back at those two games in particular and I think that we just weren’t good enough — as coaches and players, as individuals and as a team — to win them. But now that we’ve been through that process, I feel confident that we can compete against anybody in the country.”
With legendary basketball coach Lute Olson having retired and new guy Sean Miller yet to coach a game for the Wildcats, does Stoops feel that he has a chance to nudge his football program out in front of basketball in the eyes of local fans and national know-it-alls?
He almost jumps to answer. “First of all, I’ve never considered Arizona to be just a basketball school. Certainly, what Lute did, in building his program into a national powerhouse, was spectacular. But I’ve never understood the people who say, ‘Oh, Arizona is a basketball school.’
“The most successful program on campus is probably the softball team, but people don’t say that Arizona is a softball school. We have an outstanding athletics program at Arizona, with lots of great teams. Our football team plays before huge (often sell-out) crowds. We play a great style of football with solid defense and exciting offense. I think we’re building a fan base that is based on what we do on the field, not on whom we are playing. People are showing up to see us, not our opponents. So, no, we’re not competing with our own school’s basketball team for attention; we’re competing with all of the other Division I football teams in the country.”
As I said, he’s not quite so edgy.
One of the great sports quotes of all time came from former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. When asked whether the 1991 UNLV basketball team (that had won the title the year before and was undefeated going into that year’s NCAAs) was the best team ever, Wooden, without an ounce of guile, said, “Well, lots of teams have won one in a row.” (UNLV went on to lose to Duke in the semis that year.)
Along those lines, Stoops remarks, “Last year was special. But we can’t live off that. We have to do it again and again and again. We were speaking of Lute; I want to build like he did. Start a sense of pride and teamwork, instill a work ethic that’s second to none, and bring in highly skilled players to implement the system. That’s how all great programs work, through consistency and purpose. If you bring in great players and don’t have the rest, you’re selling them, your fans, and the program short.”
Wildcat fans will learn, early on, how that consistency thing is shaping up as Arizona, in its first four games in September, faces three teams that went to bowl games last year (sandwiched around a game with Northern Arizona), including a trip to Iowa, followed by the Pac-10 opener at Oregon State (which led the conference race until late in the season last year).
Stoops says that he and his team will be up for the challenge, and nothing in his demeanor, his carriage, or his recent history speaks to the contrary.
One final question: Would he ever want to play Oklahoma, coached by his brother, Bob?
“No!,” he blurts out, then reconsiders. “If we’re playing them in a BCS game for the national championship, that would be OK.”
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