One of the core values Jedd Fisch tried to communicate to his Arizona football players over the past few seasons was loyalty. Fisch made that an important part of his messaging to the Wildcats. Therefore, when Fisch took the open head coaching job with the Washington Huskies, he probably assumed his players would follow him to Montlake out of a sense of loyalty. It wasn’t the worst assumption to make. Plenty of us who follow college football know that in many cases, players play for a coach more than a university.
We saw this at USC when Tackett Curtis and Domani Jackson transferred out of the program rather than play for the new incoming defensive coaching staff. Alex Grinch and especially Donte Williams forged strong relationships with some recruits. Those recruits wanted to play for those coaches, not other ones. This is true at other schools as well.
However, at the University of Arizona, Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan wanted to be Wildcats in the same way Miller Moss wants to be a Trojan. Some players really do play for the school, not the coach. Fisch is not retaining nearly as many players in Seattle as he hoped he would. Arizona is not losing players the way it feared it would.
See what’s being said about Arizona’s roster holding up surprisingly well due to loyalty — to a school, not a coach: