On The Brink of Irrelevancy
That’s right Cats fans you are right back where you were three years ago…. OK maybe not that bad but close. As the boys in blue and red dropped to 1-2 on Saturday you could feel the excitement level over the team drop to next to nothing. All the good will of last years 6-6 season is gone and the crowd is soon to be too. Where should the blame fall on for this? The blame should fall on two men, coach Mike Stoops and athletic director Jim Livengood.
Stoops has managed to bring in an offensive coordinator who turned Willie Tuitama from walking concussion into a touchdown throwing machine but what happened to his vaunted defense?
It has all but disappeared giving up a combined 73 points in UofA’s first three games, three games that were against A I-AA (Now the Championship Division) and two Mountain West Conference schools. This has to be the most concerning trend of the season so far and makes one wonder if Stoops is the defensive genius everyone wanted to view him as.
That is where Jim Livengood comes in. Three years ago instead of hiring a proven coach he brought in a man who was a defensive coordinator, and a good one at that, but who had no head coaching experience. He entrusted this first-timer to rebuilding a program that was at rock bottom and that had very little talent. One has to question the wisdom of the, especially now that ASU has a proven coach in Dennis Erickson.
The program sits at the tipping point of going back to where it came from. It is about to be in a position where the stands are empty and the talk quickly turns to basketball once October rolls around. The only thing that can possibly help the team and Stoops himself is an upset win on Saturday at Cal, otherwise it’s time for the Sack Stoops signs, firemikestoops.com, time to start talking about who the next coach of Arizona should be (Mike Price of UTEP) and time to get used to UofA Football being irrelevant again.
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Posted by Greg Esposito
Co-founder of AzSportsHub.com. Greg provides the sometimes serious, sometimes sarcastic and always interesting takes on Arizona sports (at least we hope). Whether it’s on In The Zona with Matt or in his column Greg reports, rants and raves about whatever is in the news for Arizona Sports.
http://www.azsportshub.com/author/espo
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