By
Bryan Rosenbaum
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Newsflash: Saddam Hussein has called a press conference for today at the McKale Room. The Iraqi leader allegedly wants to apologize for killing and torturing his own people, invading Kuwait and being a headache for the United States and the rest of the world.
After five minutes, a weepy Saddam will break down into tears and wonder aloud where it all went wrong for him.
The Tucson journalists covering the conference will reach for their handkerchiefs, stop writing in their notebooks because their hands are quivering too much and then go type out a feel-good story about how decent of a man Saddam just is.
Never mind all the evils he's caused - deep down, Mr. Hussein has a good heart.
Sound familiar?
A week ago Tucson journalists couldn't wait to see UA football head coach Dick Tomey leave. When he resigned after the loss to Arizona State, a tearful press conference seemed to change the mind of every reporter in the locker room (for the record, I was not there).
This week, I have read things such as "We never knew what we had," "Tomey did things off the field that mattered more than what happened on the field," and my personal favorite, "Can't a man be judged by his character rather than his results?"
I sat in front of my local newspaper and television set stupefied - could these words really be coming from their pens and mouths? Were these the same people who made fun of Tomey's run-up-the-middle strategy and wondered if he was really smart enough to do the job?
As I walked across campus this week, I overheard people discussing who would be the UA's next head coach.
You could barely hear a whisper from UA students regarding the game with Oregon (with an outright lead in the conference standings at stake - remember that?) back in October, but throw the words "noose" and "Tomey" out there, and suddenly everybody has an opinion.
Dick Tomey is a good man. In fact, he's a great man that everybody should have a lot of respect for.
The Pac-10 hit the nail on the head when it said the conference lost a lot of class by losing Tomey. His impact on his players, coaching staff, athletic department and family is tremendous. He not only takes players the big boys didn't care about, he molded them into a decent unit and fine, young men.
But Dick Tomey did have his faults. Arizona may be one of the winningest programs in the Pac-10 during the past decade, but that's because five, six or seven wins each year adds up, especially when teams like UCLA go 11-1 one year and 3-8 the next.
Every now and then, everything needs a fresh start.
That's no different for Arizona football - have you seen what's happened at South Carolina, Purdue, Northwestern and Oregon State?
While Tomey deserves credit for all the positive things he's done here in Tucson, he also deserves credit some credit for realizing it was time to step down. And while I feel sorry for him and what he's going through, there has to be a time for objectivity instead of reaching for the box of Kleenex after a sudden change of heart.
