Season in Review – Stoops finally goes down in flames at Arizona, a few years later than expected

Reviewing the season, important team by important team. Alphabetically. If I skip your team, it was probably irrelevant.

Season in 3 sentences – Arizona was plowed by quality team after quality team early on (the same ones that plowed it to end last season). Then Mike Stoops was fired. After that, Arizona played like the middling Pac-12 team it usually is.

Season Expectations – Contending in the wide open Pac-12 South was expected. The Wildcats didn't necessarily have to win, but the meltdown that occurred with the early season schedule destroyed this team. Only a home game against UCLA to kick start some decent play allowed anything salvageable to come from this year.

Team MVP – Nick Foles. Foles did everything he could this season, throwing for over 4000 yards with a 2-1 TD-INT ratio and a 69% completion rate. Not that it helped opposite a defense that could generously be called poor.

Biggest Game – Oregon St. 37, Arizona 27; After starting 1-4 against a stretch that 90% of the country would have started 1-4 against (FCS team, at Oklahoma St., Stanford, Oregon, at USC) after collapsing down the stretch last season (losses to the same four teams and Arizona St.), a win was needed to get the program on the right track. Also, bowl hopes still remained if the ship could turn against the last place Oregon St. Beavers. Instead, Arizona laid an egg and Stoops was gone before the next game.

Bowl Game – None. Though this team was talented enough to beat Oregon St. and Colorado and get to one.

Historic Comparison – 2001 Kentucky. Big passing game, no running game or defense to speak of. Nick Foles is a heck of a lot better than Jared Lorenzen ever was though. Had that Kentucky team played this Arizona team's schedule it would have won more than two games. Had this Arizona team played that Kentucky team's schedule, it likely would have managed a third win but not four like it really won this year.

What Comes Next? Wholesale changes. Rich Rodriguez and the spread option are coming. The Wildcat personnel, if a quarterback can be found, should be fairly ready for this considering Arizona has been running a spread passing game for the last few years. On defense, the 3-3-5 is coming. In Pac-12 play, that looks like a good thing with prolific offenses all over the place and only one of those schools (Stanford) doing it by traditional power football.