Rodriguez Era Begins

Year: 2012

How it read: Star reporter Ryan Finley wrote that the 48-year-old Rodriguez was relishing a new start following ugly exits at both West Virginia and Michigan.

Finley wrote:

Timing and tradition worked against Rodriguez at Michigan, and familiarity bred contempt at West Virginia.

Arizona, then, just might be the perfect fit for a coach looking for redemption. Expectations will be kept relatively low for Rodriguez’s first few seasons, though next year’s projected opening of the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility should help in recruiting. Fans want Rodriguez’s teams to be successful, but likely won’t demand his firing if the UA struggles at first.

Rodriguez will almost certainly be given five seasons to build the program at his own pace and in his own image.

Arizona’s first celebrity coach will bank on himself.

“It’s fun to be here, where they’ve had bits and pieces of it but they haven’t been over the top,’ he said.

“We’re not going to wave a magic wand, but we can do some things here.”

How Arizona fared: Arizona surprised many experts by going 8-5 in Rodriguez’s first year. The Wildcats capped the season with a miraculous New Mexico Bowl win over Nevada. Quarterback Matt Scott led the UA to a pair of touchdowns in the final two minutes, and the Wildcats pulled off a 49-48 win on a frigid December afternoon in Albuquerque.

Postscript: The Wildcats posted a matching 8-5 record in 2013, and won the Pac-12 South Division a year later. Losses to Oregon in the conference championship game and Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl proved to be the beginning of the end for Rodriguez at Arizona. His teams went a combined 17-21 in his final three seasons. He was fired Jan. 2. The UA’s decision seemed to catch Rodriguez off-guard; he coached the Wildcats in a Foster Farms Bowl loss to Purdue days earlier, and had recently hired a new offensive line coach. The UA paid him $6.28 million in severance, but was able to avoid shelling out a $3 million “retention bonus” that would have been due to him in March. As for the promise of at least five seasons at the helm? Rodriguez got six, posting a 43-35 record.