BURBANK, Calif. — A couple of decades ago, when a young Rich Rodriguez began his career as a football coach, he got some advice from legendary Florida State head man Bobby Bowden.
“He said, ‘Let me tell you there, Rich, there are four stages when you become a head coach,’” Rodriguez recalled. “(Bowden) said, ‘You lose big, then you lose close and then you win close and then you win big.’
“So I’ve repeated it many times. But that usually was when I was in Year One, Two or Three.”
And now that it’s Year Four?
“What I told you before; it wasn’t the truth,” RichRod said with a smile. “It was a lie.”
Yeah, right.
Rodriguez’s year to “win big” unofficially kicked off Friday morning at Warner Bros. Studios, where the Arizona Wildcats coach once again put on a comedic routine for reporters inside Stage 12 for the Pac-12’s annual media days.
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He used all his best stuff, referencing movies like “The Lion King” and “Dumb and Dumber,” and he also questioned why he was whacking at a UA piñata rather than an ASU one in a post-interview event.
But soon, offseason Rodriguez — the man who loves to joke, work on his golf game when there’s time and hang by the nearest lake — will morph into in-season Rodriguez.
The jokes will be replaced by intense instruction and the golf clubs will head into storage until 2016.
And all kidding aside, Rodriguez and the Wildcats are eager to start their year to “win big” — even if others don’t expect the Wildcats to have all that much success.
Following a 10-4 season last year and a Pac-12 South title, the Wildcats were picked to finish fourth in the division on Thursday by the league’s media. The UA was selected behind USC, Arizona State and UCLA.
It raised some eyebrows, considering Arizona brings back so many critical pieces from last year’s 10-win team and doesn’t have to deal with Oregon on its schedule this year.
Combine that with ESPN’s FPI metric giving the Wildcats a less than seven percent chance of winning the South, and the defending division champions aren’t getting a whole lot of respect this preseason.
“We were picked fourth?” Rodriguez asked. “Is that where we were picked last year? It is, right? Good, that’s a good sign. I’ve been in situations where we’ve been the league favorite to win and I’ve been in situations like last year or this year, where nobody predicts you’d win.”
Which does he prefer? Well, the coach has already exaggerated that seven-percent chance and sliced it down to two percent on Friday, giving you a glimpse of what he might enjoy more.
“Two percent would be a pretty good T-shirt to make or a hat or something,” Rodriguez said with a smile. “If it motivates your guys to run an extra sprint on their own or something, maybe it will be good.”
Safety Will Parks, who made the trip to Southern California with Rodriguez and receiver David Richards, said the preseason poll definitely provided some motivation for the UA with training camp set to open Tuesday.
“When I saw that, I was so happy,” Parks said.
“Our entire locker room is made up of guys who have been underdogs their whole life and told they weren’t good enough.
“So for us, getting picked fourth one year after winning the division and winning 10 games is a good reminder that we still have a lot of work to do.”
Rodriguez doesn’t mind his players finding some extra juice for the season and is OK talking about it now. But come Tuesday, when camp opens, it will be all business and Rodriguez won’t be spouting off on polls or even goals.
“I don’t talk a lot at the beginning of the year about goals,” Rodriguez said. “We talk about winning the South and then winning the Pac-12 and then if we do that, we should be in the playoff and go from there. That will be the last talk until the end of the year, when there’s something on the line.
“I’m more of an in-the-moment-kind-of-a guy.”
So, in the moment, a few days out of training camp, is this Rodriguez team — readying for its “win big” season — the best the coach has had since he’s been in Tucson?
“I don’t know,” Rodriguez said. “I’ll be able to give you an honest answer on Thanksgiving weekend, which we have open this year.”
That of course brought the coach back to one of his most talked about topics in the past six months.
“Have I mentioned that we have 12 straight games with no open dates?” Rodriguez said with a sly grin. “Can you believe that?”
The joke got one final laugh and then Rodriguez took his act to another part of Warner Bros Studios.
“I’ve never seen this side of Coach Rod before,” Richards said. “I hope he’s like this during camp.”
If only.
