Greg Hansen: Pac-12 coaching lineup reminds of time rolling along for Arizona, others

For the first time in months, I punched up the oft-unavailable, oft-neglected Pac-12 Network last week. Buried in my cable guide at channel 840, the seemingly-doomed creation of long-gone commissioner Larry Scott has not yet been abandoned by the good people at Xfinity.
One by one over the next few hours, each Pac-12 football coach sat down for a Media Day interview and almost every time – with the exception of Utah’s commanding Kyle Whittingham and UCLA’s grumpy Chip Kelly — I would ask myself: Who is that?
Unless you are a season ticket holder at Washington or USC, it’s 50-50 that you don’t know Kalen DeBoer from Lincoln Riley.
Cal’s Troy Taylor? WSU’s Jake Dickert? Totally unrecognizable unless you write for a newspaper in Berkeley or Pullman.
ASU’s babyfaced Kenny Dillingham? He looks more like a pledge to ASU’s Sigma Chi Class of 2023 than the Sun Devils’ football coach. Someone check his ID.
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Pac-12 Media Day Football
Lucas Peltier
Few Pac-12 football followers — and few is the operative word for Pac-12 football’s diminishing audience this decade — would know Arizona coach Jedd Fisch from Oregon State’s understated Jonathan Smith. The current coaching roster doesn’t have the instantly recognizable faces of the institutional rocks of Pac-12 football coaching like Don James, Terry Donahue, David Shaw, Pete Carroll, Mike Price, Mike Bellotti, Bill Walsh, Jim Harbaugh, Dick Tomey, John Robinson and on and on.
Until Colorado’s Deion Sanders is back on his ailing feet, the Pac-12’s roster of football coaches should be known as The Nameless Gang.
Across the last 10 years, Pac-12 football has produced unprecedented change. In the summer of 2013 Fisch was an offensive coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Dillingham was on the staff at Scottsdale Chaparral HIgh School.
Dickert was coaching at Augustana, somewhere in the Dakotas.
DeBoer was at Southern Illinois; Lanning was a grad assistant at ASU, Taylor was coaching at Folsom High School in the Bay Area, Riley was a coordinator at East Carolina and Sanders was operating the Prime Prep Academy in Dallas.
It’s a reflection on the dizzying changes in 21st century sports, in Tucson as much as the Pac-12. Or have you forgotten? The last 10 years have been a blur.
In the summer of 2013, the Triple-A Tucson Padres drew 200,077 fans at the Kino Sports Complex. Tucson’s Triple-A history stretched back to 1969 and then, poof, it was gone.
In the summer of 2013, freshman basketball phenom Aaron Gordon enrolled at Arizona as the nation’s No. 4 overall prospect. After six quick months in Tucson, Gordon moved to the NBA where he has since been paid $112 million.
In the summer of 2013, UA junior running back Ka’Deem Carey was coming off a sophomore season in which he led the NCAA with 1,929 rushing yards. Carey was gone by December 2013, a two-time consensus All-American, jumping to the NFL. Now 30, Carey has gained 43 yards this season for the CFL Calgary Stampeders.
In 21st century sports, few things endure, here and everywhere.
Ten years ago this summer, 2013, Arizona baseball coach Andy Lopez was a year removed from winning the College World Series, winning the Pac-12, the future seemingly glowing with promise. Lopez soon underwent heart surgery and retired.
In the summer of 2013, Salpointe Catholic football coach Dennis Bene commanded perhaps the best high school football team in Tucson history, 14-0, routing powerful Chaparral 46-20 in the state title game. No Tucson big school has won a state football championship since. Bene? He retired four years ago.
In the summer of 2013, Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne was a rising star, perhaps THE rising star, in college athletics. He had just put the finishing touches on the $72 million Lowell-Stevens Football Facility, spent $80 million to revitalize the old bones at McKale Center and moved the proud UA baseball operation to Hi Corbett Field. The AD who was bright enough to hire star-level coaches Adia Barnes, Clancy Shields, Jay Johnson and Laura Ianello, soon left to be the AD at football-rich Alabama. Paradise, right?
Time has touched everything in Tucson sports since the summer of 2013.
Although exact figures are unavailable, it’s conceivable that most of the top 40 or 50 football players in the Pac-12 are being compensated well into six-figures, including Arizona QB Jayden de Laura and several other Wildcats.
NIL and the transfer portal have fully changed college sports. Arizona basketball coach Tommy Lloyd rebuilt his basketball roster this summer in record time, adding high-profile transfers from Alabama, San Diego State and North Carolina. Azuolas Tubelis? See ya.
Money flows. Players and coaches from 12 of the schools at last week’s Pac-12 Media day arrived in Las Vegas in private, chartered jets. Oregon State, one of the most financially-challenged schools in Power 5 sports, is just completing a $150 million makeover of its football stadium.
Salaries? Up, up, up. When Arizona fired women’s basketball coach Niya Butts in 2016, she was paid $115,000 annually. Now the school pays Barnes in excess of $1 million annually.
Pac-12 Media Day Football
Lucas Peltier
The games have changed at every level. Familiar faces have come and gone, sometimes with unsettling regularity.
At Pac-12 Media day, Fisch proudly announced his football department had a full-time staff of 37. That includes an analyst for the head coach, a coordinator of recruiting strategy, a manager for football creative media, a team reporter, a coordinator for football social media and an analyst for football media. (And that doesn’t include the robust football strength and conditioning staff).
Ten years ago this summer, 2013, Rich Rodriguez’ full-time football staff was listed at 19. Rodriguez? He is now the coach at a small-school in Alabama, Jacksonville State.
Ten years ago this summer, RichRod was building toward the 2014 Pac-12 South Division title and becoming the most popular man in Tucson.
A few years later he was fired. Arizona soon went 1-23. Move on.
Times change. Faces come and go. Let’s hope the next 10 years slow down a bit.