On the same day that the Arizona Wildcats football team was set to take on SMU in the Holiday Bowl, it was announced that defensive backs Treydan Stukes, Dalton Johnson and Genesis Smith would not participate.
The opt-outs not only played a part in the eventual 24-19 defeat but left fans upset with the abrupt timing.
One month later, Arizona head football coach Brent Brennan revealed that the announcement was strategic rather than a sudden surprise inside the locker room.
“I know those young men, the safeties that didn’t play for us, took a lot of grief for not playing, and that was one of those situations where I knew they weren’t going to play and our coaching staff had known for three weeks,” Brennan told Arizona Sports’ Bickley & Marotta on Wednesday.
“We didn’t want to give the coaching staff at SMU three weeks to gameplan without these three All-Conference, All-American players in the secondary.”
Brennan went out of his way to defend all three. All of them, he pointed out, remained loyal to the program in the face of being tempted to leave Tucson.
“I understand people being upset about (they sitting out the bowl), but I’ll tell you what, those three guys, those guys chose the University of Arizona every single year and twice a year most of the time because last December, Washington, LSU, Miami, Texas, USC were coming after all three of them, trying to get them to transfer and they said, ‘No,'” Brennan said.
“They chose Arizona, and then after spring practice, the same thing happened. (Schools were) offering big money and all kinds of crazy choices for them to make, and those young men chose the players in this program, this coaching staff and this university again.”
The head coach is no stranger to the trials and tribulations of the transfer portal, considering the Wildcats lost 38 players before the 2025 season and another 21 during this latest window.
When asked about the biggest challenge NCAA football faces, Brennan named the lack of regulation and a clear set of rules surrounding aspects like revenue sharing, NIL and recruiting.
“What is the enforcement? What can people do? What is tampering?” Brennan said. “I think that’s the one thing we’re really, really missing is everyone is kind of moving the way you move at your institution, through your program and your philosophy and your vision, but there’s no big overarching guidelines.”
from Arizona Sports https://ift.tt/8OGM5Zo
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