Tucson Heat’s on Stoops

UPDATED 9:38 p.m. PDT: Sean Miller is staying at Arizona

UA football took a nosedive to end 2010, dropping its final five, including two headscratchers (USC, Arizona State) at home. While injuries played a factor, the team simply looked disjointed and out of its element. Its red zone offense became one of the nation’s worst, and opponents scored 30+ in all but one of those defeats. Conversely, basketball hit its pinnacle as the season concluded. For Miller though, there was no contract renegotiation.

Stoops has no bearing on who gets what monies from the university, so to blame him would be outrageous. But he will be expected to bring results, and immediately. Despite a difficult schedule, UA football returns enough offensively to expect a PAC-12 South championship. Nick Foles has proven himself a top-flight quarterback, Juron Criner is among the nation’s very best wide receivers and buoys the whole corps, and the offensive line’s under Stoops have been progressively better. Even in lean years, players have stepped up on the defensive end and Stoops’ background suggest that should be no different in 2011.

Football has largely been allowed to do its thing with expectations tempered. Stoops is riding the program’s best consecutive bowl streak, at just three. He is the program’s most successful coach in those terms, but lacks mantlepiece success. A decision made in football’s favor that can be seen as negatively impacting basketball will change those expectations.

Arizona is approaching put up or shut up time. Should the Wildcats fail to deliver, there might be a new coach manning the sidelines in each of the university’s two most prominent sports.