Hansen's Sunday Notebook: RichRod, undefeated Wildcats make celebration secondary

Arizona football coach Rich Rodriguez’s day-to-day platform is “Hard Edge.” It’s not a gimmick dreamed up by some guy in the PR department.

You do not mess with RichRod. He is Mr. Hard Edge. His assistants have to be made of unusually strong fiber to successfully deal with his daily demands. He is a perfectionist of the highest order, the first one in the office in the morning, the last one to go home at night.

You don’t cross the boss.

The culture he has created inside the UA football program is such that his players know not to test him. There’s a time to celebrate, and it is not with three minutes remaining in a game tied at 24, Arizona vs. Oregon, at Autzen Stadium.

The last thing you expect at Arizona is for a player to be penalized for showboating, a me-first celebration that fatally turned Thursday’s game against the Ducks.

Defensive lineman Tony Washington sacked Anu Solomon at the 17 yard-line, did a little shimmy, ran to midfield and then took a bow toward Ducks fans.

Hey, look at me. Along with glamour unis and Nike money, that’s part of The Show at Oregon.

But you don’t mess with the refs in a situation like that. Washington put himself before his team.

The 15-yard penalty gave Arizona a first-down at the Oregon 8. Three plays later, Terris Jones-Grigsby scored the winning touchdown.

On Friday, after sleeping on the vast disappointment of a 31-24 loss, Oregon coach Mark Helfrich told reporters: “There’s probably nothing worthwhile in life and definitely in football that’s done individually. Nothing.”

One breakdown in discipline, a celebration by Washington, changed everything.

After his walk-off double-eagle at Pebble Beach’s famed 18th hole, Canyon del Oro senior Chris Meyers found himself on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” NBC/Golf Channel, in Golfweek magazine and featured in a string of other golf publications, podcasts and keep-your-eye-on-this-kid lists.

Finally, after returning to Tucson from a pinch-yourself-it’s-true week playing on the Champions Tour, winning the best-ball title with two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, Meyers re-entered Earth’s orbit.

“He told me, ‘OK, this is great, but I’m ready to move on,’” said Dan Meyers, Chris’ father, himself a former Arizona and Tucson city amateur champion. “Chris has played better, but not in that type of environment. To win that tournament, with a double-eagle on the 18th at Pebble Beach, on national TV, it probably can’t get any better.”

Meyers and his mother, Susie Meyers, who is the golf teacher/instructor for, among others, PGA Tour regular Michael Thompson and Arizona’s All-Pac-12 golfer Lindsey Weaver, won’t step back and soak it in for long.

In preparation for next month’s state championships — and while most of the Tucson golf courses are down for overseeding — Chris and his mother will fly to New York this week to play Winged Foot Country Club, a U.S. Open course, and several other of the East’s leading golf facilities.

Playing at Pebble Beach wasn’t new to Meyers. He got his first hole-in-one at the Peter Hay Golf Course, a nine-hole layout next to the ocean at Pebble Beach. He was 7. How’s that for breaking into golf?

Meyers, who will play college golf at Stanford, was one of 81 PGA Tour First Tee players invited to the Nature Valley First Tee Open. The PGA Tour paid all expenses: airfare, hotel, ground transportation. While there, he listened to motivational speeches from, among others, former NFL quarterback Steve Young, and played in a foursome with PGA Tour winners Fred Funk and Jay Haas.

“I was encouraged not just by Chris’ performance, but by how comfortable he was and how he handled himself,” his father said. “That’s half of the battle right there. It’s a big step forward in the goals he has set for himself.”

Flowing Wells football coach Mark Brunenkant is 6-0 this season, flying high, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving man. Brunenkant has not coached at traditional powers, blessed with talent and depth. He has used his coaching career to mentor and develop young men. But this year the Caballeros are rolling the way Larry Hart’s Flowing Wells powers of the 1970s did. Friday’s home showdown against Jeff Scurran and Catalina Foothills is apt to be standing-room only. Just like old times. Can’t wait.

At Sahuaro, Scott McKee’s Cougars are similarly 6-0 but the remaining schedule – Nogales, Sierra Vista Buena, Sunnyside, Cienega – is not going to be easy. McKee is building something special at Sahuaro, as three of his top defensive players are underclassmen: sophomore lineman Francisco Jimenez, junior linebackers Dylan Giangardella and Andrew Filiberti all have more than 20 tackles. Giangardella is the son of former UA standout linebacker Sammy Giangardella.

Beating Oregon so stirred up ex-Wildcat starting linebacker Adrian Koch, a Desert View grad and veteran of the Marine Corps, that he put on his old UA helmet and jersey, No. 52, and took a selfie for his Facebook friends. This UA defense has a lot of Koch-type players: those with something to prove.

Arizona softball coach Mike Candrea released his 2015 schedule last week and, unfortunately, UCLA is not on it. The Pac-12’s new format, where each team skips a Pac-12 opponent, won’t permit the top rivalry in college softball this year. That isn’t good, especially because the UA plays so many Western schools – UC Riverside, Cal State Fullerton, San Diego State, New Mexico State and UNLV – out of conference.

I listened to Sean Miller’s media day press conference, and what most impressed me is how Miller deals with being everybody’s favorite. “We embrace these expectations,” he said. “To run from them is foolish.” The Wildcats hold their first practice today. Bring it on.

Miller announced that junior center Kaleb Tarczewski continues to work so hard on his physical prowess that he has 5.2 percent body fat. That’s almost unheard of for a basketball big man whose name isn’t Karl Malone.

Over the last 40 years, Herb Wisdom has been one of the world’s leading fastpitch softball players. He spends most of his time now operating his must-visit Tubac-area restaurant, Wisdom’s, but last week he coached, played and managed Si Senor to the national championship in the 60-over master’s division in Lodi, California. Wisdom’s standouts included Sierra Vista’s Sam Farmer, who hit four home runs, Willcox pitcher Steve McFadden, who was the tournament MVP, and Tucsonan Joe Diaz, who had six RBIs. This year, Cliff Wisdom, Herb’s son, played second base for the USA National fastpitch softball team.

While watching the Dallas Cowboys-New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football, I noticed a familiar face: Terry Malone. Talk about a success story. Malone, now the Saints’ tight ends coach, arrived as a graduate assistant at Arizona in 1984, a Holy Cross grad. He then accompanied UA defensive coordinator Moe Ankney when Ankney became Bowling Green’s head coach in 1987. Malone took it from there, coaching at Michigan for 10 years and for the last eight seasons in the NFL.

Former Mountain View High School running back Richie Estrada saw his first action as a tailback for Wabash College, in the Little Giants’ 63-0 win over Allegheny last week. Estrada, who was slowed by a hamstring injury in training camp, had 68 yards on 10 carries, including a 6-yard touchdown. Wabash is ranked No. 11 in Division III.

The Pac-12 Networks last week broadcast a one-hour special on Cal’s stunning 2003 upset over USC, a game in which ex-Sahuaro High quarterback Reggie Robertson had the game of his life. Robertson, who was the No. 2 QB to Aaron Rodgers, threw the winning touchdown pass in a 34-31, triple-overtime victory over the Trojans. After earning his degree at Cal, Robertson has become an associate producer at Sony Computer in the Play Station/Entertainment America division. He played in the Canadian Football League and also worked for Sony in Japan.

Ex-Sabino volleyball standout Maddie Bushman last week was named Player of the Week for the Pac-West Conference, leading Dixie State to a pair of victories. Before transferring to the Utah school, Bushman was a first-team NJCAA All-American at Salt Lake Community College.

Tucson distance running star Craig Curley won the Mount Taylor 50K ultramarathon last week in the mountains near Albuquerque. The Pima College All-American covered the distance, about 32 miles, in four hours, 19 minutes.

Who wouldn’t want to play for Arizona’s No. 4-ranked women’s golf team? Laura Ianello’s team was in Florida last week and Chicago this week. In the fall period alone, the UA still has tournaments in North Carolina and Hawaii.

UA volleyball coach Dave Rubio enters today’s game at Colorado at 14-1, the school’s best start since 2000. “We’re living life on the edge,” Rubio said after winning at Utah on Friday. But, hey, that’s life in Pac-12 volleyball, the nation’s top league for the sport.

UA athletic director Greg Byrne flew to Starkville, Mississippi, to attend Saturday’s SEC showdown, in which Mississippi State overwhelmed Texas A&M.

It was a day in the “wayback machine” for Byrne, who hired MSU coach Dan Mullen in 2008. It was an against-the-odds hire in the mighty SEC, but it has proved to be the top move of Byrne’s AD career.

Mullen, a former Florida assistant, slowly built the Bulldogs from 5-7 to 9-4, followed by 7-6, 8-5, 7-6 and now a 5-0 season in which MSU is apt to break into the top 10 this week. The Bulldogs entered Saturday’s 48-31 victory ranked No. 12; Texas A&M was sixth.

Under Byrne, Mississippi State built a new football plant and created a new game-day environment. Since he arrived at Arizona in May 2010, Byrne has become a player on the biggest stage.

The atmosphere at the MSU-Texas A&M game came across on the ESPN screen Saturday as one you’d like to be part of as a fan, a coach, or, if you were 18 to 22 years old, as a player.

Byrne is now working on doing the same at UA.

Rich Rodriguez is his Dan Mullen. The Lowell-Stevens Football Facility is SEC-worthy. And Saturday night’s game against USC looks to be one of the few sellouts at Arizona Stadium; as of Saturday, about 55,000 tickets had been sold.

As with any school emerging as a football power, people will worry that RichRod will soon get an offer he can’t refuse, and that Byrne will someday follow.

Those are good things. The Pac-12 has replaced seven ADs and 10 head football coaches in the last five years. It’s a transient business.

Enjoy this while you can.

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