Hansen's Sunday Notebook: The sting of loss will fade

The most joyful moment of any Arizona football game, any season, is the singing of “Bear Down’’ in the winner’s locker room. Even when it’s off key and the words get mangled, you can’t beat the feeling.

I thought of that late Friday night when former Arizona all-conference tackle Glenn Parker, working for the Pac-12 Networks, took a knee in front of Mr. America, Scooby Wright, and whispered so softly you could hear the conversation from 10 yards away.

That’s how quiet it was in the loser’s locker room at Levi's Stadium.

No singing.

I thought back to the 1989 season, Parker’s senior year at Arizona, which wasn’t much different than this one, 25 years later. The ’89 Wildcats beat No 6 Oklahoma and No. 11 Washington in back-to-back home games. A month later they did it again, sweeping No. 15 Washington State and No. 22 UCLA.

Parker was a team leader, a giant of a man who went on to play in four Super Bowls for the Buffalo Bills, one of the leading players in school history. Football made for him a very good life.

The culmination of the ’89 season was a monumental late-November showdown at Arizona Stadium against No. 9 USC, a team blessed with Mr. Everything, linebacker Junior Seau, a team that would go on to win the Rose Bowl.

On that night in Tucson, the Trojans so dominated Arizona, 24-3, that fans scattered, leaving the stadium mostly empty in the final five minutes. It was so bad they didn’t bother to boo.

In the locker room that night, it was Parker who looked at the carpet, answering reporter’s questions in a whisper, unable to immediately recall the good times, or the locker room singing, that had come before.

About an hour after Friday’s game, I walked from Levi's Stadium in a rain shower and bumped into UA athletic director Greg Byrne. He stood out in his red sweater. Everything else had turned to green and yellow.

“This will blow over in a few days,’’ Byrne said. “I think our fans will remember what it took to get here.’’

He’s probably right. Football fans in Tucson survive because they have short memories. By Christmas they will remember that the Wildcats shocked the Ducks at Autzen Stadium, and that they won the Territorial Cup on an unforgettable autumn afternoon, and that they advanced further than they’ve ever advanced in a football season.

In the Oregon locker room Friday, Ducks offensive coordinator Scott Frost told reporters “I think going into any year, there are eight to 15 teams that have a legitimate chance. Sometimes things have to go right for you.’’

As unfathomable as it would’ve seemed a few weeks ago, Arizona became one of those eight to 15 teams.

Things didn’t go right on Friday, but it doesn’t take much imaginable to think that in 2015 and beyond, Arizona will be one of those eight to 15 teams again.

There’s no reason to whisper about UA football. It spoke loudly all year.

Over the summer, the Pac-12 hired retired coaches Ben Braun and Mike Montgomery to be part of its television network, analysts, but it needs to be more diverse. Former Oregon State guard Lamar Hurd is the only African-American currently among Pac-12 basketball analysts. The league would be wise to plan ahead and target current NBA players like Channing Frye, and former NBA and ASU standout Eddie House, and someone like ex-Stanford whiz Brevin Knight, to be part of its presentation in future years. 

T.J. McConnell’s family will be in Tucson next weekend, in part to watch the Wildcats play Michigan on Saturday, but also to be part of basketball games Friday night at Sunnyside and Saturday morning (11 a.m.) at Salpointe. T.J’s father, Tim McConnell, is head coach of Pittsburgh-area hoops powerhouse Chartiers Valley. His son, Matty McConnell, who averaged 21.8 points as a junior, is the Colts’ star player. Matty has committed to play at Robert Morris next season. 

Incoming UA basketball recruit Alonzo Trier, who plays at prep school juggernaut Findlay Prep of Las Vegas, scored 50 points last week against Phoenix-based Westwind Prep. Trier is averaging 34 points on a team that has six players who have committed to Division I schools. 

UA junior shortstop Kevin Newman is ranked as the nation’s No. 47 draft-eligible prospect by MLB.com, in a poll released last week. The MLB analysts described Newman, a two-time Cape Cod League batting champ, as “a master of the strike zone’’ and “strong in leadership skills.’’ It also questioned his lack of power (he has hit one home run in two UA seasons).

At the classic Army-Navy football game on Sunday, two of the leading players are from Tucson. Navy sophomore linebacker Daniel Gonzales, a Cienega grad, is second at Navy with 73 tackles and two interceptions. At Army, sophomore linebacker Jeremy Timpf of Sabino is the Cadets’ leading tackler, with 102 (including 14 for a loss). Talk about a good story-line. 

Salpointe Catholic grad Stevie Ledesma, who was a basketball star at Phoenix College and later Regis University in Denver, has become a full-time assistant coach for the Rangers. Ledesma spent two seasons as a graduate assistant before joining the Regis staff full-time this season. 

Pat Roessler, part of Jerry Kindall’s incredible coaching tree of Arizona baseball – he left the Wildcats in 1982 – last week was hired as assistant hitting coach for the New York Mets. His boss will be ex-UA outfielder Kevin Long, the Mets’ top hitting instructor. Roessler spent the last nine years in the Yankees system, most recently as director of player development. 

Rincon/University basketball coach Rich Utter last week helped to honor legendary Rincon coach Dick King at the Rincon-Walden Grove game. King coached Rincon to its only state championship 50 years ago, 1964-65. At 89, King looked fully back at home in the gymnasium in which the Rangers were a state power for most of the '60s. 

The Territorial Cup game produced a 14.8 TV rating in the Phoenix market, the top audience since ratings were metered dating to 1996. It means that 266,784 Phoenix households watched. Because Tucson isn’t an overnight market in the Nielsen ratings, it’s uncertain how many watched here. One suspects it was probably triple the Phoenix audience, and maybe close to 50 percent. 

Tucson High and Harvard grad Christine Clark has made a robust professional debut. She leads her Lavezzini Italian pro team with an 11.5 scoring average through nine games, which includes a 31-point game against Venezia on Nov. 16. 

To help keep the UA athletic department’s budget balanced, UA president Ann Weaver Hart  is apt to tack a yearly student fee of $150 or so onto the cost of admission, a fee that would result in about $5 million annually for Greg Byrne’s department. ASU last year implemented a similar fee, which raises almost $10 million per year for athletics. “I think it might be appropriate,’’ said Hart. “It would all go to athletics. I don’t like splitting those things. You can’t track it. If there’s a benefit to the students, if it makes their experience better, we might do it.’’ 

During a heady period for UA basketball and football, the school’s Campus Recreation Center received well-deserved attention as the nation’s No. 1 college recreation center/gymnasium last week. University Primetime, a fitness firm in Palo Alto, Calif., ranked the top 20 college Rec centers in the country and listed Arizona No. 1. No other Pac-12 school made the list. It’s an honor Campus Recreation business manager Ron Roberts and his staff have earned.. 

About 70 golf writers from the U.S. and Canada will be in Tucson this week for the second Tucson Media Golf Classic. It’s almost ironic that during a time of unprecedented turbulence in the Southern Arizona golf industry – the takeover of financially strapped Arizona National and Golf Club of Vistoso by a Canadian firm, and the potential sale of the two struggling El Conquistadore courses – the golf media will play Arizona National and the new Sewailo Golf Club, among others. Maybe the brilliant December sunlight will obscure the troubling decline of golf here (and in most places). Arizona National lost almost 100 percent of its membership in the change – the course was actually shuttered for a while in 2013 – but has returned to the excellent condition it was known for before the UA men’s and golf’s program were forced to abandon it as a home course. 

The first “big event’’ of the new Arizona National will be the Ricki Rarick Junior Golf Benefit on Jan. 17. Tucson pros Don Pooley and Ronnie Black, as well as Masters runnerup Dan Pohl and Tucson Open champion Andrew Magee will stage a clinic before that day’s shotgun start and lunch. Entry information: dpalmer@aznational.com.

Tucsonan Seth Pepper, an NCAA champion swimmer and UA sports Hall of Famer, was part of Team USA in the 1993 Pan Pacific Games in Hong Kong, where he became friends with teammate Brice Kopas, a Michigan grad.

They soon parted; Kopas went to medical school and became a pediatrician. Pepper works in media/entertainment enterprises.

A few weeks ago, Pepper’s wife Megan took their 2-year-old daughter, Brighton Skye, to an appointment with a new family pediatrician. It turned out to be Dr. Kopas, who had done his residency at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital and attended medical school at the UA. He is part of Skyline Pediactrics on North First Avenue.

When Megan mentioned Kopas’ name, Pepper knew it was familiar but couldn’t place it. “A senior moment,’’ he says. Pepper joined his wife and Brighton on the next visit.

It was then that the former USA Swimming teammates put it together. Kopas has been practicing medicine in Tucson for almost a decade.

“It’s a small, small world after all,’’ says Pepper.

One of the reasons Arizona hasn’t gone to the Rose Bowl (or its modern equivalent) continues to be that it has almost unfathomably never had the All-Pac-12 quarterback.

That now goes back to 1978. And it has never been more clear that the quarterback is the guy that you need to win the Really Really Big One.

Whether it be Marcus Mariota, Andrew Luck, Matt Leinart, Carson Palmer or, god forbid, Washington State Rose Bowl QB Ryan Leaf, that’s the bridge to greatness.

Between now and September, Rich Rodriguez and his quarterback guru, co-offensive coordinator Rod Smith, must and surely will be pro-active in deciding if Anu Solomon is the quarterback to take Arizona to the next step.

Against Mariota on Friday, it sometimes felt as if the Wildcat defense was playing against 12 or 13 players. He made that much of a difference.

Arizona’s burst into the Top 10, however briefly, should enable RichRod and Smith some access to the highest cut of prep quarterbacks.

Does Solomon have a ceiling? Can redshirting freshman Brandon Dawkins  be Arizona’s QB of the Future? Or is it some 18-year-old still wearing a high school jersey?

Whatever, the immediate and long term issue with Arizona football remains its quarterbacking. The Pac-12 is full of Travis Wilsons and Taylor Kellys, QBs who can take a team only so far.

Is this a New Era? Or Anu Era?