By
Maxx Wolfson and Ryan Finley
Arizona Daily Wildcat
During the Arizona football team's bye week, UA head coach Dick Tomey got political - for a day, anyway.
The Wildcats' head coach took a day to help register his players to vote in November's general election.
"That was something we wanted to get done," Tomey said. "We did that the last time there was a general election. We're trying to expose them to the fact that it is their civic responsibility."
Tomey's tradition of helping his players register to vote started in 1996, when a ballot was passed to honor Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday in Arizona.
"There were some initiatives about a Martin Luther King holiday, and I asked my players what they thought," Tomey said. "It turns out they were pretty apathetic about it. I told them that if they were apathetic about it at that time, they had no right to complain."
Tomey said that the players' responses has been overwhelmingly positive.
"They've responded very well," he said. "It's a responsibility of theirs."
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Arizona left guard Steven Grace, who missed the Utah and San Diego State games with a left shoulder injury, will have surgery and likely be out for the rest of the season.
Grace, who is entering his third season as the starting left guard for the Wildcats, re-injured his shoulder against Ohio State on Sept. 9.
"Steven Grace will probably, without contemplating, will go ahead and have the surgery because he does not feel that much better," Tomey said. "He has been having trouble sleeping, and when he rolls over in his sleep it hurts, you know, so that is a long way from playing football."
Being only a junior, Grace will have another year of eligibility.
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After the Cardinals' 50-22 trouncing of Arizona last season in Tucson, the Wildcats want to erase the memories of last season's debacle.
The morning following the game, Tomey angrily made his players do extra conditioning drills.
"All I remember after the game is running, early the next morning," sophomore running back Larry Croom said.
The sophomore feels that there will be a revenge factor against Stanford.
"Yeah, definitely, definitely, they came in here and did this in our home and in front of our home crowd, and we want to come in and do the same," Croom said. "We definitely - after that game - had a bad taste in our mouth."
Senior offensive lineman Marques McFadden remembers last year's game very clearly because he did not get any sleep between the game and the running session.
"We had to get up like five hours later," McFadden said. "Stuff like that cannot happen. You let a team come into your house and beat you at your house by more than 20 points - that's embarrassing. That's not going to sell tickets, and people are not going to come, and the town is going to talk bad about you and that's just being real. We shouldn't be losing at the house."
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Tomey hopes that one of the three Wildcat running backs - freshman Clarence Farmer and sophomores Larry Croom and Leo Mills - will emerge as a standout back.
Because each player has a different running style, Tomey feels that each player deserves his own chance to make an impact.
"I think anytime you have a position like that, you would love to have someone who is good enough to come in and take it over, like (Maurice) Morris has at Oregon and DeShaun Foster has at UCLA," Tomey said. "I think those guys have separated themselves from the rest of the team, and we will just see if that happens here. Certainly, (former running back) Trung (Canidate) did that here."
Farmer, who stood out against San Diego State, rushing for 95 yards on 13 carries in his first real action of his career, was unable to practice last week.
"I wish Clarence could have had last week to practice, but he could not practice since his knee was injured in the San Diego State game."
Despite a nagging knee injury, Farmer will play Saturday versus Stanford.
