Hansen's Notebook: 'It's time' Arizona's football narrative flips, thanks to Jedd Fisch

The Star's longtime columnist also on the transfer portal's two-way impact on college baseball ... the legacy of CDO coach Michelle Gerard ... the UA's no-brainer move extending men's tennis coach Clancy Shields ... Jayden de Laura's Pac-12 Media Day performance ... and more.
Fisch has UA football thinking 'we are,' not 'we aren't'
Arizona football coach Jedd Fisch answers questions during a portion of the Pac-12’s football media day event on Friday at Zouk nightclub in Las Vegas.
"We are going to have a breakthrough year,'' said the College Football Hall of Famer and three-time Super Bowl champion. "It's time.''
The narrative has flipped. Under Fisch, Arizona has gone from "we aren't'' to "we are.''
In two seasons at Arizona, Fisch has done more to change the image of Arizona football since Larry Smith 40 years ago. Fisch has been a workaholic, Mr. Tucson, a positive force who has surrounded himself with a Top 25–quality staff, recruited with inexhaustible energy and, Friday in Las Vegas, was bold enough to declare, "I think we are going to win a lot of games this year.''
There's that we are again.
Yet Arizona is predicted to finish eighth in the Pac-12. That's where Central Florida finished in the Big 12 preseason poll, and Ole Miss landed in the SEC preseason poll.
Said Fisch: "We're never going to be recognized for preseason honors.''
Maybe that's a good thing.
One of the boldest headlines ever produced on Pac-12 football media day was delivered 40 years ago this summer. Arizona was voted No. 1 in the preseason poll, unseating USC, which, believe it or not, had been predicted No. 1 for 18 consecutive seasons, 1965-82.
Alas, the Wildcats had no chance to play in the Rose Bowl. They had been placed on an unyielding NCAA probation a few months earlier — no bowl games, no games on TV — for misbehavior during coach Tony Mason's years, 1977-79.
But the timing was all wrong.
After climbing to No. 3 in the AP poll, opening the season 4-0, Arizona lost its focus, tied a bad Cal team and lost to a historically bad Stanford squad that would finish 1-10. The Wildcats recovered to finish 7-3-1, beat Rose Bowl-bound UCLA and stun ASU in an epic, last-second Territorial Cup triumph.
Preseason honors aren't for everybody. ASU has never been voted No. 1 in the Pac-12 preseason poll. That's 0 for 45. Nor have Cal, Oregon State and Colorado.
Fisch is working on getting Arizona out of the ASU-Cal-Oregon State grouping, moving toward the upper tier of Pac-12 football. That's a move rarely made. In the past 40 years, only Utah has been able to climb from bottom-feeder territory and sustain it.
Being a preseason favorite is fool's gold, and no one knows that more than Arizona.
The Wildcats were also voted No. 1 in the conference preseason poll in 1994 and 1999, opening No. 7 and No. 4, respectively, in the AP poll.
But the '94 Desert Swarm club fell from grace after losing at home to Colorado State — yes, Colorado State — and the '99 Wildcats, coming off a 12-1 season, unwisely scheduled an opener at No. 3 Penn State, lost 41-7, and effectively fell off the college football map for the next 24 seasons.
Times have changed. There is no Penn State on Arizona's 2023 schedule. There is no false sense of grandeur or wild expectations. As Bruschi said, "it's time.'' Unless the Wildcats are victim of a series of crippling injuries, this is a first-division Pac-12 team.
Portal goes beyond big-money schools
Arizona State baseball coach Willie Bloomquist last week told the Arizona Republic that the transfer portal "is going to destroy college baseball.''
That declaration came after the Sun Devils lost their star shortstop to Ole Miss.
"It's turned into a very ugly, dirty business,'' said Bloomquist, who further referred to the transfer process as "a swamp.''
Imagine what Arizona coach Chip Hale could say. The Wildcats have had 13 players enter the transfer portal, including a key pitcher, Aiden May, who last week bolted to Pac-12 rival Oregon State.
University of Arizona vs New Mexico | March 8, 2022
This isn't just ASU and Arizona. It's not just Top-25 programs raiding one another. The transfer portal is a blessing to mid-major programs like New Mexico, coached by former Sabino High and Arizona pitcher star Tod Brown.
In his second season at UNM, Brown used the transfer portal to get key players from Texas A&M, Kentucky, Kansas, TCU, Hawaii, Cal State Fullerton and Top 25-level Dallas Baptist, among others.
"There are many, many good baseball players sitting on the bench at places we've gone to, places like TCU and Texas A&M, and all they want is a chance,'' Brown told me. "We've used the portal to our benefit, not offering NIL money, but offering playing time. You hear about the bad side of if, but that's just half of the story.''
Michelle Gerard
CDO coach Gerard leaves a legacy
Twenty years ago, Canyon del Oro High School track coach Jim Truitt followed his instincts and hired Copper Creek Elementary School PE teacher Michelle Gerard as an assistant coach.
"Michelle had no experience coaching in high school,'' he remembers. Truitt liked her positivity, enthusiasm and work ethic.
Over the next 20 years, working for Truitt and later as a co-head coach with Rick Glider, Gerard helped CDO win a state championship and six times finish No. 2 in state boys and girls track. She coached state championship hurdler Jaide Stepter, who was surely Tucson's leading girls' high school track performer of the last 20 years, becoming a nine-time All-American at USC.
Gerard is retiring. She has been the head coach at CDO since 2019. This year her boys/girls teams won three state championships.
"Michelle was the best hire I ever made,'' said Truitt, who coached at CDO and in Tucson for almost three decades.
"She mastered all the particulars a head track has to deal with: fundraising, hiring coaches, organizing uniforms, ordering and maintaining the equipment, administering home meets, finding officials. It's a huge job and she was on top of it while teaching full-time. ''
University of Arizona vs Oklahoma State | May 6, 2023
Short stuff I: UA wisely extends Shields, Tubelis on 76ers 20-man roster
• Arizona men's tennis coach Clancy Shields was 0-15 in the Pac-12 in his first two Arizona seasons. That was about par for the course for UA men's tennis. But he has gone 18-4 the last three years, winning two Pac-12 titles. As such, Shields was awarded a five-year contract extension through 2028 last week.
Shields' UA program attracted so much attention that his one full-time assistant coach, Bryce Warren, was hired away and given a raise by Georgia last month. That didn't deter Shields from making a tough call to replace Warren. He hired Alexander Free, who was the assistant coach at Boise State last season under Clancy's brother, BSU head coach Luke Shields. The Broncos won the Mountain West last season. ...
• After the Tucson Open lost Chrysler as a title sponsor in 1998 — after our historic PGA Tour event was placed opposite the Match Play championships in San Diego — the future of pro golf in Tucson looked dismal.
But that's when the Conquistadores ran into Tucson golf aficionado Dennis Criswell, vice-president of Touchstone Energy. It wasn't long until Tucson's enduring pro golf tournament became the Touchstone Energy Tucson Open for a profitable four years, 1999-2002. Criswell was Touchstone's front man.
Sadly, Criswell died here last week. He was 79. He had long been a key operative in the rise to relevance of the Rolling Hills Golf Club on Tucson's east side. A celebration of life for Criswell will be held Aug. 5 from 1-5 p.m. at the Niblick Lounge at Rolling Hills. ...
76ers Jazz Basketball | July 5, 2023
• Azuolas Tubelis' two-way contract with the Philadelphia 76ers is a one-year, non-guaranteed deal of $551,465. He is guaranteed $75,000. He is on the 76ers' 20-man roster after playing two Summer League games (21 total minutes) and scoring six points. The 76ers also signed ASU's Marcus Bagley, who was suspended for the 2022-23 season by Sun Devil coach Bobby Hurley. Bagley has an Exhibit 10 deal with Philly, which has a $50,000 maximum salary and is not part of the 20-man roster.
Arizona Wildcats 73, Arizona State 58
Short stuff II: Desert Takeover gets rolling, Celebration of life for 'Ooh Aah Man' Cavaleri
• The UA's football arm of the NIL — Desert Takeover — has named Cole Davis as its chairman. Davis and Jeff Stevens are probably the two largest donors ever to the UA athletic department. Davis donated $100,000 to the collective, as did Tucson auto dealer Jim Click. Two former UA football standouts, quarterback Jim Krohn of Amphitheater High School's 1975 state championship team and 1980s defensive lineman John Barthalt are also among the early donors for Desert Takeover. Good start. ...
• A celebration of life for Joe Cavaleri, the "Ooh Aah Man," will be held Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Bring's Broadway Chapel, 6910 E. Broadway. Cavaleri, 71, died in Tucson earlier this month. He was the UA's popular "cheerleader'' at McKale Center and at UA baseball games from 1979-2013. ...
• The Athletic last week
Published a reflective and insightful column on ex-Arizona Wildcat Steve Kerr's formative days, many spent in Egypt and Lebanon. Most of that information about Kerr has been
Published in Tucson over the last 40 years, but it was rewarding to read that Kerr has kept in touch with one of his classmates from Cairo American College in Egypt for about 50 years. She is a singer living in Las Vegas who Kerr has arranged to sing the national anthem at Golden State Warriors home games.
Moreover, it was impressive to learn that Kerr's three siblings have also had productive and impressive careers. His older brother, John, is a professor at Michigan State, with a Ph.D in economics from Stanford. His sister, Susan, attended American University of Cairo before getting a doctorate in education from Harvard. Steve's younger brother, Andrew, has worked at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration after getting his MBA from Arizona State.
Arizona quarterback Jayden de Laura reads a prepared statement during the Pac-12's preseason football media event in Las Vegas, Friday, July 21, 2023. Video courtesy Pac-12
My two cents: De Laura showing up shows poise
Arizona quarterback Jayden de Laura came off as sincere and humble after choosing to speak to reporters at Pac-12 media day in Las Vegas on Friday.
The easy way out would've been for de Laura to decline to answer any type of question about his alleged involvement in a sexual assault after a 2018 high school football game in Hawaii. It would've been even easier for him to decline to represent Arizona at the Pac-12 media session.
To his credit, he didn't hide.
If anything, de Laura was prepared, reading at times from a script. In advance, he was likely directed by UA advisors on what he could or could not say. Moreover, de Laura kept his cool and did not make it an adversarial or awkward experience.
What comes next is anyone's guess, but de Laura has put one of the most difficult steps behind him.