Arizona at USC — 37-14, 37-10, 56-31. Arizona’s past three games. The Wildcats are the 14 and the 10 and the 31. And another loss coming up, at USC. Finished last season with five straight losses, three of them blowouts, did the Wildcats. At some schools, coaches build credit they can ride through tough times by winning a national or conference championship. In Tucson, apparently, an 8-5 season earns you that credit. Before two of those eight-win gems, Mike Stoops went 5-7, 6-6, a couple 3-8’s, maybe even a 2-10 way back there. Is this guy’s seat finally hot? Or hot again? Or genuinely hot? I’m asking. I don’t hear much news out of Arizona and I’ve spent two days of my life in Tucson — saw the Mission San Xavier del Bac, then built up an appetite walking around campus, and then relented to that appetite at one of the finest Outback Steakhouses I’ve ever been to. Let’s take this hot-seat talk in a different direction. If the Arizona athletic department doesn’t care about the football team, hire a head coach who needs the money. Hire a guy with two 11-dollar-an-hour jobs and four kids. This is a chance to help someone, to transcend sport. You can still hire regular assistant coaches to install their systems and call plays. Down South, we honestly don’t see much of a difference between losing most of your games (41-48, the Internet tells me) and losing all of them.
This alum frankly doesn’t see much of a difference between losing most of your games and losing all of them either. And the record is more like 34-48 because beating Northern Arizona five times and Stephen F. Austin and The Citadel don’t count for much.
As long as I can remember, I’ve always figured that a losing college team is a sign of a school that has its priorities straight. I didn’t go to college to be associated with a farm team for some big-league sport or other, and neither did my kids. I know it’s wrong to feel like that, but I don’t care. It’s real life I wanted, not a television show.
Gee, I always figured that a school that chose to compete in inter-collegiate sports but did not do a good job of it, probably did not do a good job in many less visible aspects of running the institution as well.