Interesting ...

[Stu Gotz]

[Iggy]

Stoops, as I recall, was very complimentary after he got canned and helped the transition from his regime to RichRod's. They spent some good quality time together and I think RR even rented Stoops' house when he first arrived in Tucson. Or something along those lines....

[El Gato]

Yes, RR rented Mike's home. And Mike seemed pretty good about the whole thing. Brother Bob was a dick, though.

[Wildcat Jones]

....he did make quite a few remarks after he left about how it's impossible to win at Arizona due to facilities and a few other things I can't recall. Very different, of course, from when he arrived and announced that his Wildcats only real fight for the Pac10 (at the time) championship would be USC. His arrogance truly did lead him to believe that the Pac10 sucked outside of USC. I'm sure in 2004 he believed he'd win big fast and land a bigger dream job within 3 or 4 years. Didn't work out so well for he or UA.

[b_dog]

Going back to the late 60's we've hired three assistant coaches to be the head coach at Arizona. Bob Weber, Jim Young, and Mike Stoops. You can argue that Stoops had to dig out from the Mackovic disaster, and he got us to three bowl games, but the collapse in his final year was on the foundation he'd built. Maybe with more money for assistants, it would have been different, but he tended to drive them away. So, the only successful coach of those with no head coaching experience was Jim Young, although he was only here for four years, and it was the WAC, not the Pac-12. I don't care how "can't miss" somebody is labeled as the top assistant in the country or what booster wants to push for him. From now on, an absolute pre-requisite for the job has to be that you have successful experience at a pretty major BCS school. Doesn't have to be a P5 team, although that would be nice. If not, you need to be winning big and knocking off a number of decent P5 schools. We'll see how Kirby Smart does at Georgia. I'm not sure how often a coordinator is really the brains of the outfit, or how much they're just good at keeping the machine in their shop running well. When you have to hire a staff, emulate and build entire systems on offense, defense, and kicking, do public relations (including damage control) in the community, be the top recruiter, deal with player behavioral problems, and be ultimately responsible for the whole thing, that's a little different than just recruiting defensive players, coaching technique, and dialing up a game plan 13 times a year. The tool kits are not necessarily identical.

[Irish27]

I disagree, I think Stoops did a very good job, especially what he inherited. If he had the new facilities and the support that RichRod has, I believe he would of had the team in a Rose Bowl. They were a double overtime loss against Oregon from playing in Pasadena. His last season is what many will remember but how he re-built the program after the Mackovic years is an accomplishment in itself. I don't think RichRod would be here today if it wasn't for Stoops success. He showed, just like Tomey did, you can win at the UofA and compete with the big boys.