RazorsEdgeAZ wrote:Need to put some perspective on RR and UA football program. RR now owns half of the winning conference records the UA program has had the last 19 years. He now has two. RR is the only coach since UA joined the Pac to improve his teams conference record by 4 games from one year to the next. RR has a P12 South title to his name.
UA has been that bad. UA football has been irrelevant for two decades now. It just has been. Having said that, RR, like or not has performed better than other UA coaches in last two decades. That's some perspective. Not on RR necessarily but with the UA program in general.
When UA joined the Pac in 1978 and for the first twenty years, UA was neck and neck with UCLA as having 2nd most conference winning season records. They were somewhat Relevant. From 1978-1998 only Washington and USC had more conference winning season records than UCLA or UA.
UA had More than Oregon, Stanford, ASU, Cal, Oregon st or Wazzu from 1978-1998
In last 19 years, UA has fallen behind ALL OF THE OTHER SCHOOLS with number of conference winning records. Since 1999, UA has 4 seasons with conference winning records. Except for Utah and Colorado who just recently joined the Pac, UA in the last 19 years have LESS winning conference records than every other PAC-10 school. Irrelevant.
But that is what has become UA football program. Some of you haven't been UA fans longer than 19 years, so easier to compare RR's performance with other coaches
19 or 20 years is a long enough resume to get some perspective of what UA football has become or allowed itself to become. It's become irrelevant and somehow in the last twenty years it still is, even with RR "propping up" the conference records. Maybe it's not all on the coaches.
I will not dispute your facts, but I do think some context is needed:
1. The other coach to have 2 conference winning seasons in the last 19 years was Mike Stoops. The only other coach we have had in that duration was John Mackovic. (I find it extremely conveniently select "19 years" as the benchmark... but it suits the agenda Scheer was trying to push when he tweeted that. We have also had 4 winning conference records in the last 10 years.
2. No coach has ever improved his team's conference record by 4 games from one year to the next because no coach has ever won 1 conference game in a season and had the opportunity to keep his job and have that chance.
3. No 'Southern Division' ever existed before Rodriguez, so he is the ONLY coach who has had that opportunity. Mike Stoops would have won one if it existed during his tenure, and I suspect Tomey would have had multiple (but am too lazy to look it up).
4. In years 3-6 of each coach's respective tenure, each coach had the following conference record/ winning %
- Mike Stoops 0.528 19-17
- Rich Rodriguez 0.432 16-21 (And that includes those 2 spectacular winning seasons)
So I guess the sorry state that the UA program is in is not reversible, and we must resign ourselves to our fate as a regular bottom dweller? I don't buy that.
But according to the argument above, short of a CFB version of Life Alert - "Our program has fallen and it cannot get up".