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. 60 RICK WARREN
With it being the 60th day until kickoff between the Lobos and Wildcats, the best player to wear No. 60 for Arizona is left guard Rick Warren, who played with the program from 1989-1990. He helped make Dick Tomey’s “Fumblerooskie” play famous in 1990. Arizona beat 15-point favorite USC and former coach Larry Smith 35-26 at the L.A. Coliseum after overcoming a 17-7 deficit with three touchdown runs by quarterback Ronald Veal in the second half, one of them set up by Warren’s 28-yard run on the Fumblerooskie. That is a play in which the ball is left on the turf, fooling the defense, and the guard picks it up and runs. Veal dropped the snap on the ground behind center Paul Tofflemire and faked on option play to the left. Warren scooped up the ball amid the traffic and took off down the right side for a 28-yard gain to the USC 3. The play begins at the 2:05:30 of the video above. “It’s as old as the hills,” UA coach Dick Tomey said of the fumblerooski in the L.A. Times, “but you’ve got to have the guts to use it.” It was the third time that season that the Wildcats used that play, which was outlawed by the NCAA after the 1992 season. Warren scored on a 24-yard touchdown rumble on a fumblerooski in a 28-16 upset of No. 11 Illinois (coached by John Mackovic) in the season-opener. “It’s called 13 fumblerooski,” Warren said in the L.A. Times, talking about the play against USC. “Thirteen is our option play left. On the 13 fumblerooski, everybody else goes left and I go right.” Warren was a walk-on in 1988 from Taft (Calif.) Junior College and Pittsburg (Kan.) State. He earned a scholarship before the start of the 1989 season. Warren went on to become a real estate investor in the Atlanta area.
NO. 60 IN 2024 — OL ALEXANDER DOOST
Doost, 6-foot-7 and 295 pounds, is transfer from Northwestern who joined the Wildcats in before spring football practice. He did not make an appearance at Northwestern during the 2023 season after graduating from Mountain Ridge High School in Phoenix. He was a four-year varsity letter-winner at Mountain Ridge. He ranked as No. 95 interior offensive lineman in the nation and No. 18 overall recruit in the state of Arizona, per 247 Sports Class of 2023 rankings.
NOTE
In what is the norm of the preseason Big 12 ballotting, Arizona is predicted to finish fifth in its first year in the conference in the media poll released Tuesday. Utah is No. 1, followed by Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Arizona and then Iowa State in the top six. Arizona plays only Utah in a conference game out of these six teams. Its game at Kansas State in Week 3 is a non-conference matchup that was scheduled while Arizona was in the Pac-12. Colorado is predicted as the 11th best team and Arizona State is last at No. 16.
Big 12 Media Preseason Pollpic.twitter.com/wYbRBRYgxp
— Arizona Football (@ArizonaFBall) July 2, 2024
THEY SAID IT
Relive a few of @tai_uiagalelei's most exciting plays from last fall! pic.twitter.com/cWmdyXzGuj
— Arizona Football (@ArizonaFBall) June 28, 2024
“Definitely not before the game but at the beginning of the week the D-line will get together and get some celebrations in. That was not planned. It came out of nowhere. I definitely was watching a lot of J.J. Watt before and that’s kind of like a J.J. Watt celebration.” — Arizona defensive lineman Ta’ita’i Uiagalelei addressing his post-sack or tackle dances, particularly the one in the video last season at Mississippi State.
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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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