“Mike Stoops was going to get you from Point A to Point B but not Point B to Pasadena.” — Anthony Gimino (longtime Arizona football beat writer for the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Citizen)
When Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood announced the 2004 hiring of Mike Stoops, the city of Tucson was ecstatic. The fiery Oklahoma defensive coordinator came from coaching royalty. He was the hottest assistant on the market. His impact and bravado played well. It was what a torn-down fan base needed.
The Stoops hire showed a commitment to being more than just a basketball school. The UA was taking the success of its football program seriously. Stoops’ first two seasons were misleading. His teams posted 3-8 records, but there were some matchups that could have gone either way. They were snakebit in close outcomes to Wisconsin and Washington State and surprisingly competitive in multiple games as significant underdogs.
Early reviews were positive and everyone reasoned that it would take time for Arizona to regain its footing considering how far the product had fallen. It appeared that Stoops was delivering. He had the program recruiting at a level that Arizona hadn’t witnessed in recent memory, if ever. The 2005 recruiting class was ranked 23rd in the nation by some services and the 2006 class was rated as high as 19th.
Stoops borrowed from the Tomey template of relying heavily on Arizona and California players along with some Texas prospects and a few junior college recruits. The prize recruit was a behemoth of a tight end named Rob Gronkowski.
How could things possibly go wrong with a guy named Gronk dominating the gridiron? This is the story of Arizona football. Of course something went wrong. Gronkowski suffered a freak back injury that forced him to miss the 2009 season. Even so, Arizona had much improved talent on both sides of the ball and a coaching staff that included younger brother Mark Stoops handling the defense, and future highly-touted head coach Sonny Dykes as offensive coordinator.
Arizona finished second in the conference and earned a berth to the Holiday Bowl, but with Gronkowski on the roster, it was not a stretch to suggest that the UA was on track to snap a nearly 50-year conference title drought. Fans thought it was possible as well, and they believed with their butts. Arizona had six home games that season. Every one eclipsed the 50,000-fan threshold.
In many ways, the 2009 season bore a striking resemblance to the just-short Arizona seasons under Tomey, where expectations ultimately led to shattered dreams. In 1992, Arizona started the season sluggishly, highlighted by a tie at woeful Oregon State. The following week, the beleaguered team traveled cross-country to powerhouse Miami and almost pulled off a stunning upset. That led to five straight wins and the rise of an iconic defense.
The Desert Swarm obliterated offenses, but it couldn’t overcome its own inept offensive lapses. The team improved to 10-2 in 1993, capped by a 29-0 dismantling of Miami in the Fiesta Bowl. The Cats were on the cover of Sports Illustrated the following season. That year, Arizona should have been 11-1, but offensive blunders cost the team key games. Instead of parlaying consecutive double-figure victory seasons, which might have led to continued success, the UA finished 1994 a disappointing 8-4. The program floundered around .500 for the next three years before its 12-1 campaign in 1998. But that proved to be a brief spike that preceded two more forgettable on-field products and Tomey’s eventual ouster.
The 2009 season had eerie similarities: a previous campaign where improvement led to a bowl appearance and high expectations, and marquee matchups with weird moments that detoured momentum and the program’s trajectory.
A quick glance at the 2009 Pac-10 standings will suggest a dominant campaign for league champion Oregon. The No. 11 Ducks were 8-1 in conference and 10-3 overall. They enjoyed a two-game cushion over their closest competitors: Oregon State, Stanford and Arizona. On Nov. 21, ESPN GameDay was in Tucson. So were nearly 58,000 rabid Wildcat fans. This was the biggest game at Arizona Stadium in a decade. It was the night Arizona was about to finally break through. If the Ducks lost in Tucson, they would have lost the league and Arizona would be Pac-10 champion, an accomplishment that would have lifted the albatross from a
scorned fan base. Unfortunately for Arizona, fan behavior was integral in the matchup. The student section rushed the field with 90 seconds remaining in regulation, believing Arizona was about to win. That was premature. After all kinds of chaos, Oregon scored shortly thereafter, and survived a 44-41 double overtime thriller.
Oregon survived. Arizona died. After the game, a handful of Wildcat fans launched water bottle projectiles onto the field. An Oregon cheerleader was injured by the outburst. That was the apex of the Stoops era, and in some ways, most notably for a once-bitten, twice shy fanbase, the end of its willingness to believe. Attitudes changed that night. The only thing Wildcat faithful believed from that point on was that something would go wrong for UA football. The success of the 2009 season led to Mark Stoops taking the Florida State defensive coordinator position while Dykes landed the head coach vacancy at Louisiana Tech.
“Mike losing both of those guys really led to things going downhill, and downhill quickly,” Gimino said. “Mark was the guy who could check Mike’s tendencies and was the guy who I think understood how to recruit to Arizona, while Sonny was obviously a great offensive mind that was very hard to replace.”
Arizona went 7-6 overall and 4-5 in conference the following year. The honeymoon had ended. Stoops’ sideline antics, once written off as welcome intensity, became a game-day distraction. Stoops Cam was a point of fodder during Wildcat television broadcasts. But that was simply a surface distraction.
The real problem was ignoring the backyard. When Stoops arrived at Arizona, he was surprised by the relative lack of talent that the Grand Canyon State produced at the high school level. As a result, he focused much of his recruiting efforts elsewhere. In the early stages, that was a positive approach. Unfortunately, by neglecting local talent, the program suffered from a lack of engagement when that talent improved; talent like one of the best offensive players in school history.
“I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but I wasn’t exactly a high school secret in this city,” said ex-Canyon del Oro and eventual Arizona Wildcat All-American running back Ka’Deem Carey. “Arizona State offering me before Arizona really annoyed me.”
The misevaluations didn’t stop there. Carey’s CDO teammate and future NFL player Blake Martinez signed with Stanford after spurning a late offer from Arizona. On the field, the Wildcats suffered from bad luck in terms of a brutal stretch of games against highly ranked opponents. They lost their last five games in 2010 and got off to a 1-5 start in 2011. After the team was embarrassed at Oregon State, new athletic director Greg Byrne fired Stoops.
“Mike did some really good things here,” Gimino said. “But he had to have a good staff around him and once he didn’t, the play on the field and the recruiting suffered. He could get you from Point A to Point B but would never get you from Point B to Pasadena.” Locally, Arizona fans were growing tired of the journey.
