Monday, October 10, 2011

Mike Stoops Out as Wildcat Football Coach

Posted By on Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 5:56 PM

From SB Nation:

According to multiple sources, Stoops is out as head coach. Athletic director Greg Byrne will likely confirm the announcement at the press conference.

This does not come as much of a surprise to those who follow UA football. Stoops was on the hot seat entering this season and a 1-5 start (with that lone victory coming over Northern Arizona University) has turned the entire fan base on the coach once thought of to be one of the true rising stars in college football.

For the time being, Tim Kish will act as head coach for the Wildcats. Judging from various tweets on Twitter, the team has been notified of the changes as well.

Greg Byrne's email release regarding the firing:

A CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP

Today I write to you to announce that Mike Stoops has been relieved of his duties and will no longer be the head coach of the Arizona football program. Coach Stoops did many things to improve our program and we are appreciative of his efforts.

This decision is the result of an ongoing evaluation of our program since my arrival a year and a half ago. While Coach Stoops did an admirable job and was able to re-establish Arizona as a football contender, it is a critical time for our football program, and I feel we need a change in leadership. Defensive coordinator Tim Kish will serve as the interim head coach for the remainder of this season.

I recently met with the team to notify the players of my decision. I also have spoken with the football staff. Our immediate focus is the team. The support service areas that take care of our team — such as academics and medical services — will continue to provide our student-athletes with first-rate support.

We have nearly two dozen seniors on our football team and we want them to finish their Arizona career by playing in a bowl game. We need you to continue to show the seniors and the entire team your support. I look forward to seeing you next Thursday against UCLA.

WHAT’S NEXT (please read and share this with your friends and family)

We will begin a search immediately for our next head football coach. I expect the search to end sometime after the regular season is over, so please be patient as we go through this process. Something I will work at diligently is to keep public information to a minimum during the process. This is important to an effective search process. During this time please be patient and cautious not to get caught up in unofficial news and/or speculation from media, message boards, or other reports from people claiming to have heard this or that rumor. I may send out an occasional note via Twitter, but other than that the next time you will hear anything from me about this search is when we introduce our new coach.

I’m sure I’ll receive a lot of emails, calls and letters suggesting that we need to hire a certain candidate. I am always pleased to hear your input and glad that you care. We will make the best decision for Arizona Football, which means being open to a variety of candidates. Please know that we will have access to information on candidates that the general public may not have. There are reasons that a certain candidate would or would not be considered based in part on that information. So whomever we hire I want you to know we will go to great lengths to ensure we have as much information as possible before we make a decision.

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