Revolution Stops Here

John Mackovic is gone and, to be blunt, the prospect of throwing up into a trash can never sounded so good.

It seems that University of Arizona football players do not object to coaches who run dictatorships, so long as they keep the cross words between the crossbars.

Arizona fired Mackovic five games into the 2003 season, ending a 2 1/2-year run/nightmare that produced a 10-18 record, a near mutiny by Wildcat players and misdirection mixed with insurrection.

To think, however, that the transition from Mackovic to first-year Coach Mike Stoops was going to be Captain Queeg to cookies, well, it has been more like lost cookies.

Stoops is as hard line as a railroad track, a disciple of discipline who studied under stone-cold Kansas State Coach Bill Snyder.

When Stoops, last December, accepted the cactus crazy challenge of Arizona, the only school from either the Pacific 10 or Big Ten to have never played in the Rose Bowl game, he put returning players through an off-conditioning workout program that led to major indigestion.

Stoops, sitting in his office recently after wrapping up his first spring practice, downplayed his strategic placing of vomit receptacles near workout stations.

“They were precautionary measures,” Stoops said with a mischievous grin.

And this guy is an improvement on Mackovic?

Light years, apparently.

It was never a matter of Arizona players not wanting to work hard, they say.

Nor is it correct to suggest that Wildcat players were soft and pampered, a case of inmates running the asylum.

It was more than insubordination that led, in 2002, to more than 40 players storming the school president’s office with their complaints about Mackovic. And, not long after, many of those same players nearly not boarding a team plane for a game at California.

The Mackovic holdovers say there is discipline and there is discipline.

“Coach Stoops does it on the field and leaves it on the field,” soon-to-be senior defensive lineman Carlos Williams said. “The other coach let it destroy relationships. Before, it was personal. Now, it’s just about football. The other coach tried to embarrass you, say things about your family.”

Stoops braced for the worst after hitching his horse to a Tucson post.

Having served 18 years as a defensive understudy for Iowa’s Hayden Fry, for Snyder at Kansas State and, more recently, for older brother Bob at Oklahoma, Stoops decided to accept the Arizona reclamation project.

“It was the right time, the right place,” the 42-year-old Stoops said.

He had been an important cog in football turnarounds at Kansas State and Oklahoma.

Mike was “bad” cop to Bob’s “good” in the Norman coaching routine, a defensive coordinator and dirty-work doer who could simultaneously teach zone-blitz principles as he curled paint with his tongue lashings.

Once, in 1998, with Kansas State leading Texas something like 42-7, Stoops could be heard screaming at players into his headset from the coaching box adjacent to press row.

Reminded of that game, Stoops chuckled and said, “We’re not going to let anything slide.”

He wondered, he said, how he was going to handle the transition into the big chair as he contemplated handing out pink slips to football-playing Arizona ingrates.

To his astonishment, it wasn’t necessary.

He arrived to a chorus of “yes sirs” and “no sirs.”

Forty-five lettermen have returned, including 11 starters on offense and eight on defense.

Arizona players won’t board a plane until their trip to UCLA Oct. 9, but you can bet they won’t threaten a boycott.

“I can’t even fathom these players doing anything like that,” Stoops said. “That’s been the most pleasant surprise. Shoot, it’s been crazy, the way they’ve been. They do everything, they let you coach them -- they don’t say anything. Maybe they’re in a state of shock, I don’t know.”

Stoops didn’t waste two breaths trying to find out what had gone wrong under Mackovic.

“That didn’t bother me, I didn’t care,” he said. “When I walked through the door, all I cared about was what they did from this day forward.”

Stoops said he wasn’t worried that his “tough love” approach might not fly on a team that had thumbed its nose at authority.

“Very demanding, yes,” he said of his philosophy, “but very human.”

Ricky Williams, a returning wide receiver, said players were desperate for direction:

“You don’t want to hear about last year’s disaster, you want to hear about the future.”

Modern players are all about “show-me.” “When you first walk through that door, your credibility factor becomes the biggest asset you have,” Stoops said. “They see what you did, what you accomplished, how you did it. To me, we had instant credibility.”

Stoops had the goods, having been a part of Kansas State’s remarkable 1990s resurgence and then directing defense for Oklahoma’s national-title team in 2000.

“Everyone knows the program he came from,” defensive tackle Carlos Williams said. “You just can’t help but listen to him.”

Stoops stuffed his coaching staff with winners -- there were no holdovers from Mackovic’s regime.

Mike’s brother Mark, Arizona’s new defensive coordinator, brought a national-title ring with him from Miami.

Now, however, comes the hard part: breaking down the door.

Arizona went 2-10 in 2003, its worst season in 47 years.

The Wildcats finished 113th nationally -- out of 117 teams -- in scoring defense and were 107th on offense.

Arizona kicked two field goals in 2003 and averaged only 42,765 fans at home games.

“Who wants to go to a game and know you’re going to get your brains beat in every Saturday?” Stoops asked.

Arizona has long been a football enigma, more mirage than oasis.

It seems to offer everything -- weather, facilities, opportunity -- yet most would say the program has underachieved.

Dick Tomey won more games, 95, than any other coach in school history -- and was fired in 2000.

Tomey, in hindsight, might have been as good as it gets.

Stoops, though, said he would not have left Oklahoma to set himself up for failure. “I would never go anyplace where I did not think I could win a championship,” he said. “I would never do it for the position or money.”

Like others before, he calls Arizona an “untapped resource.”

He sees hotbed California to the west and hotbed Texas to the east and wonders why he can’t find enough good players to win.

He says he is going to Los Angeles to recruit talent.

“I think if kids on the West Coast don’t go to USC or UCLA, they ought to come here,” he said.

Stoops studied the Pac-10 literature and detected a juggernaut in USC and ... who else?

The conference is ripe for a standings run, a jump from 10th to as high as second, he figures.

“Nobody really separates themselves except for USC right now,” Stoops said.

Mike watched Bob become a head coach and win a national title at Oklahoma in his second year.

He watched Bob take losers and turn them into winners, using sound technique and the power of positive thinking.

“Coaches don’t say the game is 90% mental for the hell of it,” Mike said.

Mike Stoops, like brother Bob, exudes confidence bordering on cockiness -- you could call it a genetic trait.

Bob made it happen at Oklahoma.

Can Mike make it happen here?

Mike Stoops put out a clarion call and issued an Arizona football challenge.

“You get out what you put in and I don’t think they’ve ever put in,” Stoops said. “You can’t be half in and half out.”

Unless, of course, you’re bending over a trash can.