Anthony Gimino has reported on Arizona athletics for almost 30 years, starting with the Arizona Daily Star and branching out to the Tucson Citizen, SI.com and also with our site, AllSportsTucson.com, to name a few outlets.
Nationally, over the last decade, he has become synonymous with college football coverage as the senior editor for Lindy’s College Football Annuals — those preseason magazines that whet the appetite for football-starved fans.
Gimino was a guest Friday on the Eye on the Ball Show on KVOI (1030-AM) and he discussed with co-host Jay Gonzales (Steve Rivera was in New Mexico visiting family) all that is pertaining to college football today — potential restrictions on games and fan involvement in the fall because of COVID-19, the top teams in the nation for 2020, an overview of the Pac-12 and the outlook for Arizona’s season (dare I write, grim?).
“What ever it is, it’s not going to be normal,” Gimino said of the 2020 season with COVID-19 implications. “I think I’ve come around now to the point where I think we’re going to have some football, but it’s going to look different. The schedule that we look at right here on May 22 may not be the schedule we see in October.
“In the FBS, there are 130 teams — it’s going to be impossible to get 130 teams on the same page. I think there may be some scrambling, some rearranging of the schedules, maybe a conference-only schedule.”
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Gimino asked the question that is weighing on athletic directors: if people are allowed to attend games at 50 percent the stadium’s capacity, who is allowed in?
Of Arizona’s fortunes next season, Gimino said, “It’s not total doom-and-gloom. There’s some nice pieces. Grant Gunnell showed some good things at quarterback last year. I don’t know if he’s a superstar in Year 2 but he looked pretty good at times.”
Gimino also mentioned four starters return on the offensive line and that linebackers Colin Schooler, Tony Fields and Anthony Pandy and cornerback Lorenzo Burns give Arizona experience on defense. The defense has an entirely new staff, however, and the Wildcats did not have spring practice to acclimate themselves to the coaches.
“You really have to contort yourself into thinking everything has to go right, everybody has to meet or exceed expectations and almost that never happens,” said Gimino, who added that Lindy’s has Arizona finishing last in the Pac-12 Southern Division..
Here is the interview:
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon.
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