Brent Brennan donates 1,000 tickets to charities, local football groups for Arizona’s homecoming game vs. Iowa State

The Wildcats (5-1) are off to their best start since 2014, which Brennan said is worth the price of admission after Arizona’s most recent road win.

“This team has been playing their tails off,” Brennan said. “These players love the University of Arizona. They keep choosing the University of Arizona, they keep choosing Tucson, and it's time for the city of Tucson to choose them. ... Let's make that arena impossible for Iowa State to play in.”

Brennan is ensuring 1,000 of those seats at Casino Del Sol Stadium for Arizona’s next home will be occupied by local youth. Brennan is buying 1,000 tickets and donating them to multiple nonprofit organizations and youth football groups:

– Boys & Girls Club

– Ronald McDonald House of Southern Arizona

– Kids of Steele

– Local youth football organizations

– Local girls flag football groups

The Boys and Girls Club “was a part of my youth” and the Ronald McDonald House nonprofit “has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember,” Brennan said at his news conference on Monday, as the Wildcats enter a bye week following their 52-31 win over West Virginia in Morgantown.

Kids of Steele is a nonprofit connected to the UA Steele Children’s Research Center at Banner Health. Arizona hosts a free football camp annually for kids (kindergarten-eighth grade) who are past or present patients at Diamond Children’s Medical Center at Banner.

“How do we continue to invest in the community here?” Brennan said. “We just want to make it available to as many people as we can and I thought this was a really easy way to engage some groups that are important to me, but also give some people a chance to see this football team play.”

Arizona’s average attendance this season is 41,434, which ranks 11th out of 16 in the Big 12. TCU, Baylor, Cincinnati, Kansas and Houston rank lower. BYU has the best attendance in the Big 12, averaging 64,373 per game at LaVell Edwards Stadium.

The capacity of Casino Del Sol Stadium is just under 50,800. The last time Arizona had a sold-out crowd for a football game was the homecoming matchup against Colorado in 2024, a disastrous blowout loss that included season-ending injuries to key starters.

The Wildcats are 1-1 in homecoming games in the Brennan era. Arizona became bowl-eligible with a win over Kansas for homecoming last year. The Wildcats could double down on bowl eligibility on homecoming against Iowa State (3-3).

Both homecoming games under Brennan kicked off in the afternoon — and it could happen again, with the Big 12 moving the Arizona-Iowa State game to a six-day window for kickoff time and television coverage; it will be announced either Saturday night or Sunday morning.

“Homecoming is such a cool thing,” Brennan said. “It’s amazing for everybody that went to school here. It’s that one thing everybody circles on their calendar and they come back and see their friends. A bunch of our former players get to come back and lie and tell each other how good they were back in the day. It’s a really cool thing.”