Hansen: Cats' new coordinator will be swimming upstream

The G-rated term for Arizona’s defensive roster is “crummy.”

But if anyone in college football knows how to deal with hardship, it would be Marcel Yates.

His high school, Los Angeles St. Pius X, eliminated football after his senior year in which the Warriors went 1-9.

His first college, Pacific, folded its football program in the middle of Yates’ freshman year.

His second college, Boise State, changed coaches before Yates could suit up. BSU head coach Pokey Allen returned for two games and died of cancer at year’s end.

Yates first coaching job, at Montana State, was available because the Bobcats were coming off an 0-11 season.

Small world: The first time Yates was part of a college football team, the Pacific Tigers flew to Tucson and lost 41-9 to an Arizona team whose defense included Joe Salave’a, who has become The Hot Young Defensive Coach in Pac-12 football. Unfortunately for Arizona, Salave’a is coaching (and recruiting) at Washington State.

That was September 1995, and the brains of Arizona’s acclaimed Double Eagle Flex defense was Rich Ellerson, who went on to be the head coach at Army, Cal Poly and Southern Utah.

There are those who say Rich Rodriguez might have been wise to tap into Ellerson’s expertise in remaking Arizona’s defense; hire him as a consultant or just pick his football brain. Ellerson quietly returned to Tucson last year and helped coach the Catalina Trojans High School defense.

But Ellerson last week moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to be the defensive coordinator at FCS power Jacksonville University.

College football is a different-strokes, different-folks business. Ellerson, 63, will serve as much as a mentor as a coach at Jacksonville; head coach Ian Shields, 43, a former Oregon State quarterback, covets the wisdom of Ellerson’s four decades in the business.

That wise-old-coach stuff doesn’t play at Arizona any longer. RichRod recently fired defensive coaches who had a combined 106 years of coaching experience.

Arizona has gone young; depending on who RichRod hires as his defensive line coach, the average age of Yates and new defensive assistants, Donte Williams and Jahmile Addae, is 34.

The new theory at Arizona is that younger coaches relate better to 17-year-old prospects, although that message hasn’t been absorbed at rivals USC, UCLA and Oregon, the league’s top recruiting powers.

Oregon’s new defensive coordinator, Brady Hoke, is 57. UCLA’s second-year defensive coordinator, Tom Bradley, turns 60 this year. USC’s new defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast is 48.

RichRod did what most coaches and athletic directors do when they make significant personnel changes. They search for the opposite. Arizona was old. Now it is young.

To get Yates away from his alma mater, Arizona will ask the Board of Regents to approve a two-year contract; if approved, he will be the first assistant coach (any sport) to get a multi-year deal in school history.

It’s not likely Yates was RichRod’s first choice. USC assistant head coach Johnny Nansen, who is of Polynesian lineage, would’ve been a home run hire the school coveted. But Nansen has a multi-year contract at USC and, frankly, those in the coaching industry worry that coaching at Arizona might not be secure in the long-term.

The acquisition of Yates, Williams and Addae was more like calling up three prospects from Triple-A and hoping they are ready to hit big-league pitching.

Nothing has changed more in college football the last decade than coaching defense. In 2006, Arizona defensive coordinator Mark Stoops faced offenses that ran 727 total plays. Last year, Arizona’s opponents snapped 1,024 plays.

Stoops was one of the last big-name defensive coordinators, at Arizona and Florida State, to become a “power 5” conference head coach (Kentucky) before coaching reputations were chopped up by no-huddle offenses.

As with all modern defensive coordinators (except maybe those at Alabama),Yates has been burned. His Boise State defense gave up 52 points in a loss to sub-.500 Utah State last year. The Broncos were also ineffective in stopping option teams Air Force and New Mexico, two surprise losses that led to Boise State’s worst conference season since 1998.

He does not appear to be naïve about the situation at Arizona. “It’s a great job to get,” Yates told a Boise radio station. “But keeping the job is the tough part.”

How tough is coaching defense and recruiting football players to Arizona?

Incredibly, former Arizona tight end Brandon Manumaleuna, now an assistant coach at Los Angeles Narbonne High School, last week helped one of his star players, receiver Sean Riley, arrange a recruiting visit to Syracuse, now coached be ex-UA offensive coordinator Dino Babers.

That’s 2,678 miles from L.A.

Riley had made a commitment to play for Arizona 10 months ago. Yet once he got to Syracuse, he flipped and now will play for the Orange.

Bring it on, Mr. Yates. The sea is rising.