The Man

When you hear about Kenny Hewitt, an offensive lineman at the University of Hawaii when Tomey was there, you begin to understand. In 1988, a year after Tomey left for the University of Arizona, Hewitt killed himself. The very next day, Tomey boarded a plane and was a pallbearer at the funeral. Ten years later when the Wildcats played in Hawaii, he slid away for 30 minutes to spend some time with Kenny’s family. Ten year later!

When you learn about Tomey, who before the beginning of fall practice in 1999, visited a local penitentiary near Tucson. For the entire day, Tomey helped inmates prepare for the exam to receive their general education diplomas.

One could argue that Tomey did these things to garner community support and favor for the program. The stories, quite honestly, are too real and too numerous to be about the program. Again, it’s about the man.

His statement at the time, “Universities and university communities support football greatly and I think it is important for the coaching staff, the football team, for everyone to give back,” Tomey said. “I try to do as much as I can within our community that I possibly can with the time restraints this job has. I think it is important and I think it is something a coach should do.”

When you read statements from people in the community that state…

“My father was in the middle stages of lung cancer when he read a story about the University of Hawaii football players walking barefoot on hot coals to introduce them to the idea they could accomplish anything they set their minds to. As with many cancer patients, my father was grasping for anything that might lengthen his life and kill the beast inside him. Upon reading this story, my dad wrote the head coach of Hawaii explaining his situation and asking for information about this exercise. The coach not only wrote him back, but he also contacted the leader of the program on Dad's behalf and arranged for my father to participate at no cost. While the exercise did little to extend his life, it gave him a sense of confidence and peace that the disease had stripped him of.”

The head coach of Hawaii at that time was Dick Tomey.

What the University of Texas gets in Dick Tomey is a complete man. Dubbed a player's coach for his quiet, likeable demeanor, Tomey has long been known for being loved by his players.

While he and Mack Brown seem to flow from the same stock, Coach Tomey does bring something to Texas that, quite honestly, the program is in dire need of.

The Coach

Beside the terminology like ‘eagle-flex’ and ‘desert swarm’ Dick Tomey brings a lot of Dick Vermeil to the program, without the tears.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any football ‘guru’s’ who would argue the fact that Tomey many times, if not most times, didmore withless while at Arizona. While Arizona has some fairly good football, it will never be mistaken for Florida, Texas or California. Tomey’s strategy was always to tie down the top kids in Arizona, tap into California, leverage his relationships in Hawaii and find and secure talent in places like American Samoa. He would then bring this eclectic group of talent together and coach it up. Tomey, like few other coaches, has the ability to make a group better than the sum of their individual parts. Loving and motivating players to play beyond the restraints of their own talent came to be second nature for the former Arizona coach. Molding a scheme around his talent to find success is what he is good at.

Former player Doug Kyle said…

“He encouraged everyone on the team to excel beyond their ability and I was an example of someone who attained a higher level of success than perhaps my ability warranted. I would say I was an above average athlete, but there were guys that were probably better, faster etc., but Tomey had this ability to motivate me to always do better.”

One can only wonder what Tomey, new defensive coordinator GregRobinson and the rest of the defensive staff will be able to do with the amount of talent on campus as well as the talent that should sign in February. Having this talent play at a level above themselves could very well equal something special.

We can talk all day about the man, who at 61 was the starting first-baseman for a Tucson City League baseball team designed to attract adults between the ages of 20 and 30, but we might slight his football prowess.

We can talk about the defenses and the schemes that he put together with ‘sub-par’ talent to compete at a very high level but that might diminish his value as a man.

Rather than concentrate on one, maybe we should appreciate both.

Great hire!