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. 49 SEAN HARRIS
With it being the 49th day until kickoff between the Lobos and Wildcats, the best player to wear No. 49 for Arizona is linebacker Sean Harris, who played with the Wildcats during the Desert Swarm era from 1991-94 after graduating from Tucson High School. Harris had 32.5 tackles for loss in his Arizona career before playing with the Chicago Bears in the NFL. He was a two-time first-team All-Pac-10 player, in 1993 and 1994. He earned first-team All-America honors by the Scripps Howard news service in 1993 and was a third-team Associated Press All-American that season. He led the Wildcats in tackles in 1992 and 1994. One of seven future NFL draft picks from Arizona’s Class of 1990 recruits, joining Rob Waldrop, Chuck Levy, Josh Miller, Steve McLaughlin, Tony Bouie and Mike Scurlock. Harris, who starred with his brother Lamar at Tucson High, spent seven seasons in the NFL — six with the Bears and one with the Indianapolis Colts. Sean is enjoying retirement with his wife, Cha-Ron, a former Arizona basketball player, in Phoenix with their daughter Kayla. Their sons Jalen and Jason were part of Arizona’s football program. Jalen is now a defensive end with the Washington Commanders and Jason is in the master’s program at Concordia St. Paul, where he is concluding his college football career as a defensive lineman.
NO. 49 IN 2024 — P JORDAN FORBES
Forbes is a 6-foot-2 and 225-pound redshirt sophomore punter from Mesa Desert Ridge. He did not play in his previous two seasons with the Wildcats after joining the program as a walk-on. He made the Pac-12 Fall Academic Honor Roll. He played wide receiver and punter at Desert Ridge. He averaged 35.5 yards per punt with 14 inside the 20 during 17 games played.
NOTE
We are excited to announce the 24 teams that will be eligible to play in the Valero Alamo Bowl on Saturday, December 28 at 6:30pm CT on ABC! Looking forward to another great bowl season.#ValeroAlamoBowl pic.twitter.com/QWKZstJxXf
— Valero Alamo Bowl (@valeroalamobowl) July 12, 2024
Arizona can theoretically play in the Alamo Bowl at San Antonio again this season against a fellow Big 12 member because the Pac-12’s bowl arrangement with the game continues this season and next despite the Pac-12 having only Oregon State and Washington State remaining. That announcement was made on Friday by the Alamo Bowl. The bowls affiliated with the Pac-12 schools including Arizona are still tied to this year and next include LA Bowl (against a Mountain West school), Las Vegas Bowl (SEC), Alamo Bowl (Big 12), Independence Bowl (Army), Sun Bowl (ACC) and Holiday Bowl (ACC). The Big 12’s bowl alliance for now includes Guaranteed Rate Bowl in Phoenix, Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, Fla., Texas Bowl in Houston, First Responder Bowl in Dallas and Alamo Bowl. That could all change by 2026, the first year Arizona is part of the Big 12’s bowl affiliations. Big 12 commisssioner Brett Yormark said this week at the Big 12 Media Days at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas that the conference is already in discussions of being tied to the Las Vegas Bowl.
THEY SAID IT
“I would say the easiest part of that is when we — like offensively when we started putting that scheme together, we let the current players — Noah Fifita, TMac (Tetairoa McMillan), those guys — have a lot of input in terms of keeping a lot of the verbiage the same. So how we call plays — I put the onus on the coaches to learn what they tag plays or how they communicated that a year ago and make that part of us, which that way only 10 guys have to learn it and not 70. So that was the way we did that schematically, and defensively we were able to retain Duane Akina and Brett Arce and some other pieces there that the scheme will be the same or similar. I would say that part of it, you always want to lean into the talent you have. That’s just where I come from. I think part of that is making sure those players are comfortable in the schemes and situations you put them in on game day.” — Brennan on trying to balance between making changes and putting his own footprint on the program while continuing a lot of the things that made the team so successful down the stretch last season.
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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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