JOSH FIELDS/Arizona Daily Wildcat Head coach Mike Stoops and the rest of the Wildcats are keeping an optimistic outlook for this season's win column. With his inaugural season under his belt, fans will have high expectations for Stoops to meet.

As training camps break across the nation, many college football fans believe that this will be the year their team competes for a national championship.

Or, if you're an Arizona football fan, you may be thinking this could be the year your team makes it to a bowl game.

While the national media gives the Wildcats little chance, with most media outlets picking them to finish no higher than eighth in the Pacific 10 Conference, head coach Mike Stoops has made the team and many of its fans believe that this winter Arizona could reach its first bowl since 1998.

Since coming to Tucson, Stoops has changed the attitude of Arizona football, from talent upgrades on the field to his colorful antics on the sideline.

Wildcat fans saw a glimpse of the future and the optimism Stoops often speaks about in the last three games of last season.

After starting the campaign a woeful 1-7, they won their first road game in two years at Washington, led national champion Southern California after the first quarter, and shocked nationally-ranked ASU in a victory that Stoops said gave the team momentum heading into this year.

Stoops and his staff followed that up with a successful offseason that saw them land a top-20 recruiting class, according to www.rivals.com, that gives the team more depth than in the past. Also, the team's new strength program has noticeably improved the team's muscle.

Stoops has declared that a team makes the most strides between its first and second years, as he knows well from his days as defensive coordinator at Oklahoma, when a 7-5 Sooners team became national champions during his second season.

While Arizona doesn't have the kind of talent to make that happen, a similar improvement would put Arizona in a bowl come the holiday season.

Michael Schwartz columnist

After six years of losing on the field and at the gate, Stoops' high hopes have raised the expectations for this year's football team.

While they're still a year away from being expected to reach a bowl, the squad cannot afford to take any more steps backward after so many years of doing just that.

All the goodwill that has been created won't mean a thing in the middle of October if the Wildcats lay goose eggs during a tough early schedule: Road games against 2004 top-10 teams Utah, USC and California and a home contest against ranked Purdue make up four of the first five games.

This murderers row of a schedule could make Wildcat fans remember the dark days when Arizona was routinely spanked around by better opponents.

A more mature, improved Wildcat squad should at least hang around and pull out a victory or two in all those games, except for the one against the two-time defending national champion Trojans.

However, the most important thing Stoops' troops need to show is improvement, as fans need to see the team heading in the right direction for once.

They need to see senior safety Darrell Brooks lead a quality defense after another year in the Stoops system and for sophomore quarterback Richard Kovalcheck to make the offense look more like the unit that lit up ASU for 34 points than that which averaged a measly 13 points per game the rest of the season.

As Arizona breaks camp a year more experienced, deeper and stronger, they give fans much reason to believe these are not the same old Wildcats.

While Stoops will be given another year before being expected to annually reach a bowl, there finally appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel for Arizona football.

If all goes well, that means Wildcat fans will be spending a few days of winter break in Las Vegas.

If you can believe that.