Feb. 6, 2013
TUCSON – See below for a transcript from Wednesday’s Arizona football signing day press conference with head coach Rich Rodriguez.
Opening statement:
“Today is a combination of a lot of work put in the past 12 months by a lot of different folks on the staff, as every coach in America can tell you. We’re pleased with our recruiting class. We met a lot of needs. You definitely need to wait a few years before you can evaluate a recruiting class. There are several guys in this class that will probably have an opportunity to play early and be great contributors. They’re great people to add to our program from a playing standpoint and a character standpoint. I’m very excited about this class.”
On what quarterback Anu Solomon will bring to the program:
“Anu is a guy we identified pretty early. He may be one of the best high school quarterbacks from a winning standpoint in the country in a long, long time. I think he was 56-4, won four state championships and is from one of the best programs in the country. He can throw, he runs wells, he’s a tough competitor and he’s a winner. Again, he played for a great high school program. I’m really excited about Anu. He has the skill set that we look for in a quarterback. He’s a competitor and a tough guy. He should have a great future here.”
On getting a head start recruiting Anu Solomon:
“It was probably about this time last year. At this time of the year, we’re pretty swamped with next year’s class. It was around this time last year. He came for a couple of unofficial visits. I think he saw it was a good fit for him, too, as far as what we do offensively. He can see himself in that role.”
On benefiting from the intangibles of Anu Solomon:
“I think that’s part of the evaluation process that’s very important to us. We call them “OKGs”, our kind of guys. These are the guys that are talented and have the skill set. They certainly have size, ability and the type of mentality that they’re competitive and want to keep getting better. Particularly in the quarterback position, you want to have a guy that is a gym rat, so to speak. The guys that want to study the game and want to know everything there is to know about your program. Anu is one of them and he’s proven that throughout his high school career. He’ll do that in college. And not just with him. A lot of kids are recruited on potential but action is better than potential. If you want to see a guy that will be productive in college, see who’s productive in high school. That’s the same thing with the pros. If you want to know who will be productive in the NFL, see who was really productive at the highest level of college football.”
On Anu Solomon being able to lead a team from the quarterback position:
“The thing with that position is that they have to have certain characteristics. Some are more vocal than others and some acquire it. They naturally have to lead by the position they play. That is assumed by being a quarterback. Whether you want to or not, you have to assume leadership. It doesn’t have to be the same loud leadership. He certainly portrayed a lot of that in high school.”
On quarterback Jesse Scroggins:
“I think we certainly were looking for a guy that could come in and provide competition for B.J. Denker and the rest of the crew. I don’t want to say he was forgotten about. I think he was kind of lingering in junior college land and was looking for a place to prove himself. The timing was really good for us. I think Jesse has an opportunity to come and compete right away. I think he’s hungry. He’s matured from his experiences. He’s hungry to prove himself all over again. It’s been a really good addition.”
On the decision to play or redshirt a freshman:
“If they’re good enough to win, we’ll play them. We don’t ever guarantee a guy that they will start as soon as he gets on campus because that won’t be fair to the current guys on your team. But we don’t recruit backups. We recruit for them to compete. If they’re ready to play as a true freshman, they’ll play. It’s our job and their job to get them ready. That’s the way we’ve always been. If they’re good enough to win with and can help us win games then we’ll play them right when they get here.”
On preparing for the recruiting class:
“There’s always some suspense. This is the earliest we had so many commitments. Last summer, we knew we were going to recruit a full class. We still have about two spots left. We thought by the end of last summer we would have about half of the class committed. That’s a high number. I think we had almost three-quarters of them committed. It was a class that filled very quickly. We almost had to put the brakes on them. But we looked at it as these are all guys we really want. They stuck with us. You’ll always lose or gain one or two at the end. We did a good job evaluating them. The guys we wanted made unofficial visits and had made visits to other places to compare to. When they committed, we knew it was a true commitment.” On the difference between his first and second year recruiting: “It’s night and day. Year one you’re scrambling. For us, we had a solid class. We also honored the class that had already committed here. That was a department policy and I understood that. We honored those commitments and added a few more. Some of those guys contributed last year and more will contribute this year. This year we had a longer time to evaluate to really fulfill our needs. I think this is a really good recruiting class. If we continue to do our jobs on the field and with the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility being finished in the July, our recruiting will continue to get even better. Now we can sell them with more results. We had a solid year on the field and they can see some progress there. Starting this summer, instead of selling pictures of the Lowell-Stevens facility, we’ll take them through it. It’s a game changer.”
On Khari McGee’s potential at quarterback:
“Khari can play a lot of positions. He was too good of an athlete not to take. Whether it’s at quarterback or receiver, Khari McGee can play at this level. People have always accused me of collecting quarterbacks. I’m guilty as charged. I like having a lot of quarterbacks and I like competition at that position and having at least two or preferably three that we can win with. Anu (Solomon), Jesse (Scroggins) and Khari are guys that are athletic, can run, and I think can all play quarterback at this level.”
On the defensive changes with the new recruiting class:
“It changes us from a numbers standpoint. It will take us another recruiting class to get the numbers where we want. This year we will have more bodies but it will still take another year to get the numbers up as far as the breakdown of the 85 scholarships and what we have on defense. The numbers we have are going to be young with freshmen and sophomores but that’s all we have defensively. Some of these guys are going to play early and most likely before they’re ready but we’ll have to do our job as coaches to make newcomers ready so these guys can get on the field and help us win.”
On Matt Dudek’s contributions:
“Matt Dudek has done a great job as our on-campus recruiting guy and he came up with a way to describe what we want to do going forward in our recruiting process. There are a lot of guys who rank the kids who do a great job but we like to do our own evaluation. The recruiting class this year and going forward are going to be our kind of guys. Matt has done a great job of organizing and running the Google+ Hangout this morning. A lot of our staff did a great job through this whole process, Rod Smith, Bill Kirelawich, Tony Dews, Calvin Magee. Matt organized things on campus and gets the guys going. The first year is always the toughest to get everything going especially with our facilities change.”
On emotions of post-signing day action:
“There’s a lot more relief than anything else. This year was probably the least amount of surprise in all my years as a head coach. There’s always one or two that you truly don’t know at the end. I didn’t wake up this morning not knowing what to expect. Every year there’s going to be surprises where things go down to the wire because this is such a big decision. Now a day, more and more young men are going on unofficial visits with their families and taking their time to look at college campuses so they’re getting a better idea of where they want to go and play for the next four years.”
On increasing team speed with the recruiting class:
“I thought we ran okay last year but we weren’t nearly fast enough or big enough on either side of the ball. All coaches want to be faster and bigger but we were lacking in both of those aspects at times. We had to have a lot of long drives offensively, sometimes 12 to 14 play drives. Defensively, we struggled in the size factor and guys playing out of position. We have big guys in this class but we still have to get bigger and I’m always looking for fast guys. We have three or four guys in this class who are dynamic in both punt and kick return who will have a great opportunity to show what they can do.”
On the NCAA rule change:
“I think it’s going to change it a lot more than people are saying it will. We have our own plan going forward. We’ll still have the same evaluation process where the recruiting coach, position coach, the coordinator, and I all have to see the film. Every guy that has a potential offer, I will watch them on film. I trust Matt (Dudek) and the rest of the personnel in the recruiting process but before we offer a scholarship, I have to see them. We spend more time doing that more than anything and that won’t change. We have to have a good plan to effectively use our personnel to watch this film and to evaluate guys and find guys we see as a good fit to our program.”
