FanHouse Arizona Football

The Arizona Wildcats start Fall Camp with a new offensive coordinator and quarterback Willie Tuitama has more to worry about than concussions: he has to learn a new offensive scheme, the spread.

Popularized by Urban Meyer at Utah and Florida, the spread offense coming to Tucson and breathing some fresh air into the steadily-improving Wildcat team. Tuitama sounds confident in comments to the Tucson Citizen: "We should be able to go out there and air it out and torch our defense. That is our goal every day when we get on the field. We have to start right away."

In some respects, it looks like Arizona may be starting a trend in the Pac Ten. While the perennial conference favorites USC have one of the best defenses in the country, the one offense that has given Pete Carroll teams the fits is the spread. Virginia Tech, Cal, Oregon, Texas, Hawaii and Notre Dame have all used the scheme at one point in the last five years and managed to control the ball and the tempo--even if all were not successful in the end.

If Tuitama can bring the new Wildcat spread offense to Los Angeles in October and beat the Men of Troy, well, he'll be more than just a Heisman dark-horse.

University of Arizona head football coach Mike Stoops can count to ten--as in the number of career wins he hopes to have after this season--but given the state of academics in the Wildcats athletics department, it is not clear how many of his players could get that high.

Wildcat football's 39% graduation rate between 1996 and 1999 ranks them at the bottom of the Pac Ten--and they don't even have the excuse of ninth-place Cal Berkeley that, you know, the school has an academic reputation of note. What's more, Arizona's bottom Academic Progress Report from 2005-06 at 883 has caused the school to lose seven scholarships in two years--which cannot help when you have to compete on the field against titans like Pete Carroll's USC Trojans.

In order to combat this academic futility, the Tucson Citizen is reporting that Stoops is hiring forty new tutors before the season starts, bringing the total to 70. As the coach said, "[a]cademics is the most important aspect of your program." That, and winning.

At least four college football players competed at this weekend's NCAA outdoor track championships. This is a high honor for those players as they are true two-sport stars which is rare nowadays. I wrote earlier about LSU's Trindon Holliday being college football's fastest man. Well, he and his second-place 10.06 times in the 100 meters happen to share some fast company.

Florida State cornerback Michael Ray Garvin placed sixth in the 100 meter finals, completing the race in 10.30 seconds.

The other event to feature a quartet of football players was the final of the 4x100 meter relay. Michael Ray garvin ran the #3 leg for Florida State. He and his teammates won the event in 38.60 seconds. Holliday ran the anchor leg for second-place LSU as they came in at 38.85 seconds.

Clemson tailback C.J. Spiller ran the anchor leg for his Tigers who clocked in at 40.07 seconds to finish seventh in the event. Finally there was Arizona cornerback Antoine Cason who ran the third leg for his eigth-place Wildcats who finished the race in 40.13 seconds.

There are many more college football players who compete in track during the spring, but few reach the NCAA Championships. Congratulations to Holliday, Garvin, Spiller and Cason for representing their programs well in Sacramento.

(Photo Credits L-R: Streeter Lecka, Grant Halverson and Harry How, Getty Images)