Interesting art. on Fresno's Hill

[Bossdawg]

Raising Arizona catches Hill's eye

By John Branch
The Fresno Bee
(Published Tuesday, September 30, 2003, 5:25 AM)



Pat Hill was asked about his interest in the suddenly vacant coaching job at Arizona, just as you knew he would be.
"You know, I really don't have much of a comment on it," the Fresno State football coach said Monday.

Then, without further prompting, he commented -- 594 words of comment, to be exact.

Hill's answer, transcribed and unedited, would take up most of this space. The Cliffs' Notes version is this: Arizona is a great job. Hill has both professional and personal ties to Tucson and the school. Fresno State needs better facilities.

Let's summarize.

Arizona fired John Mackovic on Sunday, naming defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz interim coach. A national search for a permanent replacement has begun.

Hill, no doubt, will be considered. He was the offensive line coach and offensive coordinator for Arizona in 1990 and 1991 under Dick Tomey, the most successful coach in Wildcats history and a good friend of Hill's. People with unofficial Arizona ties already are calling Hill, apparently testing him out.

Tucson newspapers have named Hill a leading candidate, along with the likes of Boise State coach Dan Hawkins, USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow and Oklahoma defensive coordinator Mike Stoops.

(Former Washington State and Alabama coach Mike Price will not be considered, Arizona president Peter Likins said.)

Hill makes as much sense as anyone. He has built a winning program at Fresno State with limited resources. The program looks clean. He is relatively young yet experienced, energetic yet respected. In many ways, he is the anti-Mackovic, which might be just what Arizona needs.

And Hill would probably take it. Probably. He won't say that. So we're left to read between the lines.

"Arizona's a great job," Hill said. "My mom still lives in Arizona. It's a Pac-10 job. It's got a chance to win, not only in the Pac-10 but on a national level. Dick Tomey proved that. Whoever they hire there has got a great opportunity to win."

Stop there. Hill's mother and father moved to Tucson in 1977 and became Arizona football boosters. When Hill's father died in 1989, and after Arizona beat UCLA in Tucson and while Hill was an assistant at Fresno State, Tomey and the Wildcats coaching staff went to the house and presented Yolanda Hill with the game ball.

His mother still has the ball in her bedroom. And she still has season tickets for the 1-4 Wildcats.

"She's frustrated," Hill said.

OK. Let Hill continue. He's on a roll.

"But as far as the Arizona job, yeah, there'll be a lot of talk about it, there will be a lot of speculation about it," Hill said. "But until it comes out of me, it's just talk. Like I said, [Arizona] is a good job. I haven't said that about any others -- there have been other jobs mentioned, opportunities there that I've never looked into. But whoever goes to Arizona, you can win a national championship."

Hill's name has been mentioned with previous openings at Kansas, Michigan State and Oregon State. This one is better. This one makes more sense.

There might not be another job in the country that would provide a better match for Hill. And this one just happens to be available.

Hill's response wasn't just about the Arizona job. Most of it, in fact, was about Fresno State, not Arizona. It took him just 66 words to start talking about Fresno State's facilities.

It's not a new tune. It's just a different arrangement.

Consideration from Arizona could give Hill the leverage he has been missing in getting a locker room, academic center and meeting rooms built. It might spur Fresno State and some big-money donors into action.

Hill won't admit that. But he has to know it.

"I've never said, 'Do it or else,' " he said after his weekly news conference. "I want people to do it because they think it's the right thing to do."

This Arizona job search has three possible outcomes for Hill: he gets a better job, he keeps his old job but gets the facilities he so desperately wants, or the status quo.

He can't help but stump for one of the first two options. Everyone wants a better working situation. But since it's bad form to openly campaign for a new job, he is left to continue campaigning for better resources.

Hill frequently points out -- three times Monday -- that he is in his seventh year at Fresno State. He has built the program's practice fields, expanded the training room, bought more than a dozen computers for a cramped academic room, and just built a dining room and created a training table through money he has raised.

But a new building is beyond his means. You can't build it with funds from selling used cars. He needs help from the university or some rich donors or a combination of the two.

Those plans have stalled. Hill can't help but wonder if something he thought would be built by now will actually ever get built at all.

"That's crossed my mind," Hill said. "I don't see anybody really picking up the flag and saying, 'Here, let's go.' Hopefully they will."

Hill guessed that it would take $5 million to build what he wants -- what he believes the program needs just to lift itself from its current standing in the facilities arms race.

That standing is near the bottom of all Division I football programs, maybe at the bottom of the Western Athletic Conference.

Arizona and its recently improved facilities are at or near the top of the Pac-10, Hill said.

But if someone walked into his Fresno State office today with a $5 million check?

"There would be no reason for me to leave," Hill said.

He didn't mean for it to sound like a dare. All he was doing was answering a question.

The columnist can be reached at jbranch@fresnobee.com or 441-6217.

[champion110]

Being up really early this morning has me not thinking clearly. I did not see the "." after the word "art". I thought that I was going to find a picture on this thread of some great bulldog sculpture that sits on a hill outside of Fresno's stadium.

I should just try to go back to bed. :-)