Bill Bedenbaugh

Many felt the biggest loss would be offensive coordinator Sonny Dykes. Dykes is now the head coach at Louisiana Tech but he leaves two of his disciples, who are also disciples for former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, to man the Arizona offense.

While Co-coordinators is not the norm, both Bill Bedenbaugh and Seth Littrell have spent the bulk of their coaching careers in this offense and have worked together for most of that time. Littrell will do the actual play calling, but he and Bedenbaugh will work with the rest of the offensive staff to put the gameplans together.

It may be unconventional, but so far the move has generated positive reviews and no one seems to be concerned about the two sharing the role.

“A lot of people put too much into that,” said Littrell. “We have the same philosophies as an offense and we work well together as a staff. We’ll tinker with some things here and there and play to our personnel.” Littrell.

Fans seem worried about how the coaches will function, but they seem to be the only ones. Mikes Stoops called it a non-issue and the players have adjusted to the transition, with a few actually saying they prefer the new set-up.

So how will it work? Littrell will be up in the booth, calling the plays, while Bedenbaugh will remain on the field to work with the offensive line. Between series they will go over the gameplan that they developed at the start of the week.

Will it look any different? It might. Offensive lineman Adam Grant told the media that he thinks the offense will be a little more smash mouth in the redzone, while they showed some new formations and plays in fall camp that were hardly conducive to “three yards and a cloud of dust” football. 

Dykes’ departure also opened up a spot on the staff for a quarterback’s coach. Mike Stoops went out and tabbed Frank Scelfo to work with the signal callers, the first quarterback’s only coach in the last decade. So far the players are reacting positively to Scelfo’s teaching

“He knows so much,” said Foles. “He knows so much about the fundamentals of quarterback. I am just very lucky to be working with him, I am so excited.”

Losing coordinators, losing players to the pros, welcome to “big boy football”.

Sonny Dykes/courtesy: WildcatSportsReport.com

Arizona brought in Mike Stoops to try to duplicate the success he had when he was a defensive coordinator at Oklahoma. While the rebuilding process has been slower than folks would like, and they have not had the successes as Stoops had at Oklahoma, it is clear the program is on the up swing.

The better the team plays, the more the coaches will be a hot commodity. The better players a team recruits, the more likely you are to lose them early to the draft.

Pete Carroll had three coaches get head coaching gigs. Bob Stoops has seen four of his coordinators leave for head coaching jobs (five if you count Bo Pelini who had a one-year stop at LSU before getting the Nebraska job).

Get the picture? While it would be great to have staff continuity, it just does not happen. It is a good thing. If coaches know you can move up from a place like Arizona, they will be drawn to the job. While some life-long coordinators have been great, don’t you want your coaches to be ambitious? While you don’t want to hire a bunch of mercenaries, you also don’t want coaches who no one else is interested in.

The same goes for players. Fans always lament that their teams can’t land five-star players, but then turn around and get mad when those talented players leave the program for the draft. You can’t have one, without the other.

Look at the programs that have the most players declaring for the draft, and I’ll show you programs that win football games. Washington State is not losing a ton of the guys early for the pros. Baylor does not see a rash of players declare for the draft. Duke coaches are not sweating out the declaration deadline.

The fact is, Arizona has had players declare early for the draft in three of the last four years and had to wait and see what Antoine Cason was going to do.

John Mackovic never lost a kid early. Dick Tomey lost just one.

Urban Meyer and Nick Sabin lose five a year.

Arizona is not in that elite level yet, but they are inching closer. They may never play for a national title, but a BCS bowl berth is not a possibility. The side effect to that success is that coaches and players move on.

Enjoy big boy football.