New year, new team, same hopeful thoughts. Arizona football is here, hoping to make it two consecutive winning seasons.
It’s been a decade – actually more – since Arizona has been able to reel off three winning seasons when it comes to football. For now, let’s see if it can make it two straight. It all begins on Tuesday at Arizona.
Let the hype – er, hope – begin behind a veteran and respected quarterback in Noah Fifita and third-year coach Brent Brennan.
“I think everyone’s hopeful. I think we’re all,” said Brennan on Tuesday at the team’s annual preseason media day. “That’s one of the things that I said when I got here (three years ago) is that we wanted to build a consistent, sustainable winning program at the University of Arizona, and not be just this roller coaster team.”
So far, it’s been one down and one up season – with projections Arizona will continue to ascend.
Brennan spoke of good alignment from the school’s president to the athletic director to the coaching staff “that has allowed us to build something that can be consistent.”
It all starts on Tuesday and about a month before Arizona faces Northern Arizona at Casino Del Sol Stadium.
It’s been since 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 since Arizona went on a roll with four winning seasons. Seems like a lifetime ago. Rich Rodriguez was the coach back then. But fans are still longing for more consistency. Stringing winning streaks has been a tough deal. Now would be a good time to get another going.
By all predictions – and appearances – Arizona has a good chance of making it two winning seasons in a row.
Historically, however, when Arizona does well – sometimes really well – it falters a season later. Is there pressure to come back and win again – even if it’s not to the level of last year’s nine-win season?
“I think there’s always. I think the pressure usually is created within,” UA defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales said. “But if you look at the history of this football program, ’93 was unbelievable. ’94 sucked; 1998 was unbelievable, ’99 sucked; 23 was unbelievable, ’24 sucked.
“We’ve never been able to put two seasons together where you’re on the national stage, with that kind of prominence, so there’s all kinds of pressure to not do what we’ve done in the past. We were trying to change the past. We want to be extraordinary and do ordinary things. The red line (Arizona’s motto) that this program is built around gives us the opportunity to do that … but we’ll see.”
We’ll know in December as Gonzales said. But is it about ability or between brains of the players or just maybe the history of the program?
“Our jobs as coaches is to keep these kids from being arrogant,” Gonzales said. “Nobody thought we’d be any good last year so we snuck up on everybody even at the end of the season people were still saying (we could win).
“Our kids never wavered on that.”
As Gonzales – a guy who loves numbers – said team 122 (the number of football teams in UA’s history “is dead” and now it’s the job of 123 to start it’s own legacy.
“Team 123 has done nothing, and it starts (Tuesday) for it’s legacy,” he said. “We’ll see.”
Brennan feels the same way. Last year was last year and the stress level is “always high.”
“This is major-college football and no one cares what you did yesterday,” Brennan said. “So, that doesn’t change. We’re excited for it, we’re here for it.”
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