Reaction to Pac-12 developments on and off the field …
1. Ty Jordan was Utah football
Like many, the Hotline saw the news about Utah tailback Ty Jordan on Saturday morning and first thought it was a sick joke or erroneous report.
It soon became apparent the news was real and tragic:
The freshman had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound — believed to be accidental in nature — on Christmas night.
Our thoughts are with the family and the Utah football program.
The Hotline did not know Jordan, 19, other than from what we witnessed of him on the field.
Our intent here is not to eulogize Jordan or to turn this into a political statement about a Constitutional amendment intended to protect American citizens from British Redcoats.
Rather, our purpose is to offer a morsel of context from afar, which is this:
In one season, five games and 83 carries, Ty Jordan epitomized the Utah football program.
You may or may not have noticed Jordan in his unremarkable debut against USC.
But if you were like the Hotline, you watched Jordan the following week in Seattle and thought (with apologies for the candor):
“Holy crap, that guy’s good.”
And in that regard, Jordan was like so many other Utah players over the years.
Assigned a three-star rating by both 247sports and Rivals, Jordan wasn’t considered one of the top-50 prospects in the state of Texas last year or one of the headliners in Utah’s 2020 class.
Then he stepped on the field and was nothing short of scintillating.
In five games, Jordan rushed for 600 yards and was named Pac-12 Freshman Offensive Player of the Year.
His trajectory mirrors those of so many other Utes, from Bradlee Anae and Marcus Williams to Britain Covey, Leki Fotu and Julian Blackmon.
No program in the conference does a better job aligning its style of play with its recruiting pool.
No program in the conference does a better job identifying players who fit that style of play.
And no program does a better job developing talent.
Utah turns three-star recruits into all-conference performers with remarkable regularity.
Jordan, the 441st-ranked prospect in the country in the class of 2020 (per 247sports), undoubtedly would have been the next.
In five games, he epitomized decades of Utah football.
2. Arizona hired who?
Days later, Arizona’s decision to hire career assistant Jedd Fisch makes as little sense as it did when news broke on Wednesday morning.
And of all the ways it makes little sense, we continually return to one in particular:
There was no market for Fisch until the Wildcats created one.
In fact, we don’t recall Fisch ever being a finalist for a head coaching vacancy in major college football … or even being rumored as a finalist.
In the past 13 years, he has coached for 10 teams in the Power Five and the NFL.
He has been a position coach and a coordinator.
He has been fired.
He has moved on.
He has even been promoted.
But at no time was Fisch ever elevated to the head coaching position.
At no time was he viewed as one of the hottest playcallers in the FBS.
At no time was he viewed as a rising star.
His primary qualification for the Arizona job, it seems, is that he crossed paths years ago with university president Robert Robbins and remained on Robbins’ radar.
It only takes one school — one president — to make a market.
3. Fisch’s one chance for success
Fisch’s lack of qualifications for the job doesn’t guarantee he will fail in a few short years.
But this will guarantee failure: Poor hiring decisions.
Fisch doesn’t have the leeway afforded to a proven winner or to a popular hire.
He has to get the staff right immediately.
He has to create a sense of legitimacy instantly.
He must make the right choices with the assistants he decides to retain off Kevin Sumlin’s staff and the right choices with the assistants he courts externally.
If every hiring decision isn’t made with recruiting in mind — especially recruiting Polynesian communities in California and Utah and the Pacific islands — then Fisch is doomed to fail.
The more money available for salaries, the better chance he stands.
Under Sumlin, the Arizona assistants and coordinators earned a collective $3.4 million in 2020 (excluding reductions related to the pandemic), according to the USA Today salary database.
That was one of the lowest staff salary pools in the Power Five.
Per a report from CBS Sports, Fisch will have about $3.7 million available — more, but not much more.
How he deploys that limited amount will shape his prospects for success.
4. Why not pick names from a hat?
We know what Pac-12 head coaches weren’t doing over the course of seven weeks: They weren’t paying a lick of attention to quarterback play.
The out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach is the only way to explain the mystifying votes for all-conference QB released on Tuesday.
The coaches named USC’s Kedon Slovis to the first team.
Second-team honors went to both Colorado’s Sam Noyer and UCLA’s Dorian Thompson-Robinson.
Meanwhile, Stanford’s Davis Mills and Washington’s Dylan Morris were honorable-mention selections.
Here’s who didn’t get a sniff from the coaches: Oregon’s Tyler Shough, who led the conference, and was No. 14 in the country, in passing efficiency.
Yes, Shough was erratic for long stretches; he made some terrible decisions; he looked like a first-year starter.
On those points, we won’t argue.
Nor will we take exception to the coaches naming Slovis as the first-team QB.
Or to Mills being an honorable-mention selection. (For our money, he’s the best passer, and the best pro prospect, in the conference.)
But let’s compare some statistics: completion percentage, yards-per-attempt, touchdowns, interceptions and efficiency rating — five fairly important QB categories.
Shough: 62.7/9.4/13/5/162.2
Morris: 60.6/8.2/4/3/136
Thompson-Robinson 65.2/8.1/12/4/156.3
Noyer: 58.4/7.3/6/5/126.9
Shough had the top efficiency rating and the highest yards-per-attempt of the group.
His completion percentage and TDs-to-INTs were second only to Thompson-Robinson.
He exceeds Noyer in all categories, and it’s not even close.
Stats aren’t the only measurement of QB play, but those five categories, taken together, provide a fairly accurate representation of performance.
The fact that Noyer and Thompson-Robinson were second-team picks, that Morris was honorable-mention and that Shough was zero-mention … that’s a joke.
5. Warning: Trouble ahead (on the hardwood)
It was easy to miss, because of the timing:
On Wednesday afternoon, the UCLA-Oregon basketball game was postponed because of COVID issues … with the officials.
That’s right: One of the officials scheduled to work the game tested positive for COVID, and the others were deemed close contacts and required to quarantine.
Given that it was an afternoon game two days before Christmas, there was no standby crew available.
Let the situation serve as yet another warning:
The basketball season could experience far more disruption than football.
It’s not just the small rosters susceptible to quarantine; or the close-contact nature of the sport; or the indoor setting.
It’s also two teams and an officiating crew that must clear testing.
Conference play starts next week.
We won’t be surprised if 50 percent of the games get canceled or postponed, at least through the first half of February.
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