Arizona Football: 6 Thoughts fans should ponder

No. 4 Back off of the coach, we all knew this was a rebuilding year before the season began

I always look forward to listening to Rich Rod on Monday, long after he’s had time to cool down. The team has discussed the loss, and he has hope once again that his team will execute what they had practiced all week.

Most of the time, Rodriguez has explained previous losses as being due to unforeseen injuries, missed assignments, lack of execution, and not getting turnovers.

And he’s absolutely, right! This coach is not one to bullshit the media, and he says what he thinks in any manner he sees fit.

Although, we believe he is also right when he speaks about what fans think. He looks for the fans to support his team no matter what. Why? Because the team and coaches all care about winning, and even when they aren’t performing up to par, they still need fans support to keep going. If the fans give up on them, it will be hard to keep the ‘drive to succeed’ torch burning.

A lot of fans and most of the media was critical of Anu Solomon due to his back-to-back three-and-out attempts. Coach wants everyone to get that they may not understand everything he was up against, including Stanford’s ‘really good dudes.’ You can add the descriptor huge to good in that sentiment.

The UofA isn’t the only school who has had a revolving quarterback door, and rival ASU has suffered a similar fate.

Rodriguez explained that most of his players still care about winning and divulged that there were some he needed to work with. These players are usually stars on their high school teams, they are used to winning all the time, and losing isn’t easy to bounce back from when you are used to being a winner.

In contrast, bandwagon fans tend to wrap up their feelings of success in their own life with their team’s success. If Joe Shmo fails at work, they don’t have the entire company demeaning them, yet Joe Shmo feels empowered on social media to do just that to student athletes.

These young men are someone’s brother, someone’s son. I cannot imagine how it would feel to put in that much work mentally and physically only to not get the result you set out to do only to be ridiculed by people who think they know the answers but have no experience.

Arizona Wildcats

I get it, as a fan, I am truly bummed out. What I see is certain players trying to take the team on their shoulders, wanting to be the hero and possibly doing too much. They know if they could just make one or two great plays in a series, maybe their teammates will rise to the occasion and it will give the team a lift to a victory.

Hopefully, these struggles are bringing the team together, and they can learn life lessons. They are not giving up, and fans should not give up on them. If you just cannot stop criticizing and pulling out your pitchforks asking for a firing of coaches, then just don’t watch.

I was sitting next to an Arizona alum on the way back to Los Angeles from Homecoming weekend, his name was Nicholas, he was still happy and enjoying his last hours of the weekend. He said it hurt too much to watch, so he just doesn’t watch. But he doesn’t slam the team either, and he still hopes they do well and is a Wildcat fan for life.

I liked Nicholas.