Arizona Wildcats: Top 30 athletes in school history

It’s not easy to come up with Arizona Wildcats top 30 athletes in school history, but we gave it a try.

The University of Arizona, founded in 1885, is 130 years old and has a rich history of athletics. Whittling down the list to the top 30 players or athletes from the vast population of Arizona’s successful alumni was not an easy task.

What we did was look at not only what the athlete accomplished at Arizona, but what they accomplished once they graduated. Is their name a name that is recognized by the school or the nation? Have they won championships or medals? Do they support the school as they moved into their professional career? Has Arizona retired their jersey?  Have they played in pro sports for awhile?

That is what we considered. What we found were a lot of athletes who moved on to play professional sports and did not play all four years at Arizona. The minority of athletes stayed in school and earned four year degrees.

The sports covered include swimming, golf, football, baseball, and basketball. The athletes covered played at the University of Arizona all the way back to the 1950’s. We included both men and women. For fun, list all the players you can name and see how many we included in our list.

It’s easy just to choose football and basketball players, so we dove in a little deeper and when you do that you are going to drop names off the list. So please excuse Zona Zealots if we left your favorite player out or a recent graduate. Please note, these athletes are not in any particular order.

Have fun!

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