A View From The Cheap Seats – The Don’t Believe The LACK Of Hype

Posted on August 1, 2021

 

 

By Rich Herrera

Wildcats Radio 1290/CBS Sports Radio

 

The college football season is upon us and the traditional powers are once again poised to take their place on the throne of the game of NCAA football.

In the PAC-12 it’s the same story with USC picked in the South.


And The Oregon Ducks picked to fly in the North.


The Arizona Wildcats are expected to finish dead last in the Pac this season.

Candidly I can’t argue with the pre-season poll.  Arizona is riding a 12 game losing streak that stretches back to the 2019 season.  There are more questions than there are answers heading into the beginning of training camp on Friday.  Who will play quarterback in the opener vs BYU?  How will the offensive line play with a QB under center for the first time in a long time?  Who will be able to put pressure on the great QB’s we have in the conference?  How quickly will the new coaching staff be able to download the playbook to the entire team this fall?  Who will emerge as leaders for this team that has been beaten down for the last few years?  How will they react when they face their first big test and what kind of resolve will they show when they knocked on their rear end this season?

There is one big question that has already been answered for me.  Last week in LA at PAC-12 Football Media Day, I was interviewing Anthony Pandy and he told me something that makes me feel good about the biggest challenge the Cats will have this season.   Have they changed the culture around the football program?  Have they been able to change course and get the team to buy into the new direction that Jedd Fisch is taking them this season.


Pandy told me that Coach Fisch is owning the 70-7 loss to ASU. He wasn’t even here when the Cats were mauled by The School Up North. In fact, he was probably in New England breaking down film of the Pats loss to the Rams on Thanksgiving. He had nothing to go with the loss to ASU. He could have said turn the page, let’s move on, I wasn’t the coach so I don’t care what happened last year. But that is not what a good leader does. A good leader shoulders the burden like the rest of his troops. He gets in there with them and has their back. He demands accountability of his team, but even bigger than that, he is accountable to them as well. He has bought into this team and they have bought into him, and that is something we haven’t seen around Arizona Football in a while.


I don’t care about any polls at this point of the rebuilding of Arizona Football. We can watch the polls later. For my money right now the Arizona Wildcats have already exceeded what they did last season before the first day of camp because when they say IT’s Personal, it means something.

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