That’s Donnie Salum third from the right with Rob Gronkowski on his left and Chris Gronkowski on the far left of the photo. Photo courtesy BearDownDonnie.com

The party is over.

It was a good one. The Arizona Wildcats football family — and then some — showed up at a resort in Chandler last Friday for a day of golf, a dinner, an amazing silent auction full of donated memorabilia, all in emotional and financial support of one of their own, Donnie Salum.

Dick Tomey. Rob Gronkowski. Nick Foles. Rob Waldrop. Mike Stoops. Byron Evans. Rich Rodriguez.

Salum’s high school coach. NFL quarterback Chris Miller, Salum’s former teammate with the Atlanta Falcons. Even Lute Olson.

“It was a pretty incredible day and night,” Salum said. “The love that was shown was off the charts.”

The Wildcats can’t, won’t, stop there. For Salum, the fight goes on. He has an extremely rare bone tumor at the base of his skull, touching his brain stem. It might be cancerous. It might not. Doctors can’t know unless they do a biopsy, which they recommend not doing at this time, due to the delicate location of the tumor.

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Coach Mike Stoops was 41-50 at Arizona. Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE

Former Arizona coach Mike Stoops really hasn’t been negative — at least publicly — about his seven-and-a-half seasons with the Wildcats, but it sounded like some bitterness seeped through in an interview posted Wednesday on CBSSports.com.

Stoops, now the defensive coordinator for his brother Bob at Oklahoma, said of the UA program during his time at Arizona: “We may have got it as good as it can get.”

He went on to explain:

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Could Mike Stoops be wearing crimson and cream next season? Photo by Jason O. Watson-US PRESSWIRE

Former Arizona coach Mike Stoops spent all week hanging out with his brother Bob.

That could soon become a more permanent arrangement.

Bob Stoops’ Oklahoma team defeated Iowa 31-14 in the Insight Bowl in Tempe on Friday night, and ESPN sideline reporter Heather Cox said near the close of the telecast that there were “strong indications” Mike Stoops soon would be rejoining the Sooners’ coaching staff.

Mike Stoops was OU’s defensive backs coach and co-defensive coordinator from 1999 to 2003, becoming one of the nation’s hottest assistant coaches before taking the Arizona head coaching job for the 2004 season.

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Derrick Williams salutes the student section after his game-saving block against Washington. Photo by Chris Morrison, US-PRESSWIRE

Coaches coming, going and staying. NCAA champions. Memorable games. Unforgettable players.

The year that was in Arizona Wildcats athletics was packed with storylines, good and bad, and we’ll be buzzing about some of it for decades to come.

The longest-standing sports bloggers at TucsonCitizen.com — myself included — voted for the biggest UA stories of the year, trying to sort out individual accomplishments from big games from off-field news … balancing big sports with those that don’t get as much coverage.

Here are the results. The top 12 Arizona Wildcats sports stories of the year:

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Rich Rodriguez told Greg Byrne (left) that he needs everyone 'pulling in the same direction.' Photo by Mark Evans, TucsonCitizen.com

One of the many things that is different for coach Rich Rodriguez at Arizona than it was at Michigan: He has the support of the former head coach.

With only a couple of weeks on the job, Rodriguez has met with fired Mike Stoops twice for dinner, doing so as friends but also to discuss the business of Wildcats football.

“Because we have known each other for a long time, I didn’t want to put him in an uncomfortable spot and ask him where all the bodies are buried and where all the traps are laid,” Rodriguez said. “But we talked about the program. …

“He had great things to say about it. He told me, like everybody else did, that you’re going to love living here and that we have good kids and you’re going to love coaching them.”

Contrast that to when Rodriguez was hired at Michigan.

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Could Mike Stoops be wearing scarlet and gray next season? Photo by Jason O. Watson-US PRESSWIRE

With Ohio State set to announce Urban Meyer as its next football coach this afternoon, rumors are that he will bring in former Arizona head coach Mike Stoops as his defensive coordinator.

We’ll see.

“I haven’t been offered any job, anywhere,” Stoops told TucsonCitizen.com on Monday morning. “I’m still in Arizona.

“It’s an interesting time right now. It will be an interesting week; I will put it that way. I don’t know what all is going to happen, but something will happen between this and next week.”

Even if the Ohio State rumor is true, it’s likely Stoops wouldn’t talk about it before it became official. But he did talk about the how attractive the job of Buckeye’s defensive coordinator would be, especially for a guy who grew up in a football family in Youngstown, Ohio.

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Former Arizona coach Mike Stoops might soon be back on the sideline. Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE

Former Arizona coach Mike Stoops is the subject of job rumors, as two websites — Coachingsearch.com and Footballscoop.com reported late Friday night that Stoops had an offer to become head coach at Florida Atlantic.

FAU coach Howard Schnellenberger is retiring after the season.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel wrote Saturday morning that athletic director Craig Angelos, asked if that report were true, answered back via text message: “No.”

Coachingsearch.com also reported that Stoops “may soon also have the opportunity to join Urban Meyer’s staff at Ohio State as the defensive coordinator.”

Another website, OWLaccess.com, reported last week that Angelos was flying to Arizona to interview Stoops.

Stoops was fired in midseason after compiling a 41-50 record in 7 1/2 seasons at Arizona.

Mike Stoops in a happy time, following last season's win over Cal. Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Former Arizona Wildcats football coach Mike Stoops says he feels like he is on a bye week. Nothing important to do on Saturdays. He is adjusting, he says, to being “unaffiliated.”

Reached by phone late Saturday afternoon, Stoops said he planned on following his old team on TV against Washington that night, even though doing so might be bittersweet.

“My heart,” he said, “is still with these players.”

Athletic director Greg Byrne fired Stoops on Oct. 10 after the team’s 1-5 start and a 10-game losing streak against FBS competition. “He handled himself with class and dignity,” Byrne said at the time.

Three weeks removed from the firing, Stoops stayed classy publicly when asked about the timing and, perhaps, surprising nature, of the firing.

“I just felt like Greg was trying to do what was best for the program,” Stoops said.

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Fans climb the goal posts after Arizona's home over ASU in 2004, Mike Stoops' first season. Tucson Citizen photo.

There were some good times.

Beating ranked teams. Storming the field. Climbing goal posts.

Arizona football coach Mike Stoops posted 41 victories, which wasn’t enough for him to keep his job through his eighth season, but fans will always some special moments.

Here is one opinion of the five best victories of the Stoops era (with regret, I left off the 2006 win over No. 8 Cal, because I thought some of the others on the list were more significant).

Let’s take them in chronological order:

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Tim Kish will make his debut as interim head coach Thursday night. Photo by Michael Chow/The Arizona Republic

Arizona interim football head coach Tim Kish held his first weekly news conference with the local media Monday, and here are some highlights:

There was one comment from Kish that seemed to sum up his first week on the job, as he has tried to instill a lighter atmosphere around the program and attempted to inject some fun into practices.

He said the best piece of advice came from former Arizona swimming coach Frank Busch, a national-championship winning coach who is now the national director of USA Swimming.

“Frank Busch put it best,” Kish said.

“The players don’t really care how much I know, or how much the staff knows, they want to know how much we care,” Kish said. “That has really been our theme going forward. That has been great advice, and I have taken it to heart.”

Kish said that fired coach Mike Stoops addressed the team Friday.

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