To get ready for the upcoming Arizona football season, All Sports Tucson offers a countdown, which will include history notes and a look ahead to the season — a good way to keep Arizona football on the mind in the summer months leading up to fall camp in early August and then kickoff against New Mexico on Aug. 31 in the start of the Brent Brennan era.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS PREVIOUS DAYS IN THE COUNTDOWN
A LOOK BACK — NO. 63 JOHN BRANDOM
With it being the 63rd day until kickoff between the Lobos and Wildcats, the best player to wear No. 63 for Arizona is offensive guard John Brandom, who played with the program from 1986-89. He teamed with Arizona great Glenn Parker to make a formidable right side of the line. Brandom went on to be a successful head coach at Corona (Calif.) High School for 16 years from 1996 to 2011. He went on to coach at Riverside (Calif.) Hillcrest High School from 2015 to 2018. Brandom was with Parker at a Cholla High School football game last year and mentioned he is looking at the possibility of coaching again after moving to Tucson recently.
NO. 63 IN 2024 — OL ELIJHA PAYNE
Payne, 6-foot-7 and 310 pounds, is a redshirt freshman from Chatsworth (Calif.) Sierra Canyon High School. A three-star prospect with offers from USC, UCLA, Arizona State, Arkansas, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Miami, Nevada, Oregon, Oregon State, UNLV and Utah State. He is originally from Las Vegas. He took official visits to UCLA and USC four months before committing to Arizona in July 2022.
NOTE
Lindy’s Sports College Football Annual predicts Arizona will finish fifth in the Big 12. The top four are Oklahoma State, Utah, Kansas and Kansas State. The Wildcats only play Utah in a league game out of this group. The game at Kansas State on Sept. 13 is a non-conference game that was arranged before Arizona left the Pac-12 for the Big 12. Arizona also does not play the predicted No. 6 team, Iowa State. All in all, stacks as up as one of the more manageable schedules in the Big 12 if these predictions are accurate.
THEY SAID IT
“Arizona has all the pieces to field one of the Big 12’s elite offenses. … Things are hazy when predicting a first-year coach (Brennan) to a new conference. … The Wildcats should be plenty good again after a 10-3 season.” — Lindy’s Sports College Football Annual
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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. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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