Adam Gaub columnist

Stoops.

If there is any one name that people in Tucson would associate with Arizona football, this would be it. Half the people you talk to couldn't tell you how to spell Kovalcheck, and most people couldn't tell you half of the starters on defense.

But mention the name Stoops, and even the casual fan will engage you on the team's raised expectations for the fall, or that glorious fall day in November our boys spent taking ASU out behind the woodshed.

We finished 3-8. The funny thing is, most people couldn't care less because there is hope. Many of the team's starters are back, we began to put points on the board toward the end of last season, and our defensive secondary is rated as one of the best in the conference.

The real reason for the hope? You guessed it - Stoops.

There's always excitement around a fresh start when a new coach takes over, so people could argue that the raised attendance numbers (see box) were a little inflated because of that.

However, in John Mackovic's first year in 2001 the Wildcats opened the season on a three-game winning streak before their home matchup with Pacific 10 Conference foe Washington State, in which only 42,729 fans showed up.

Under Mike Stoops last year, the Wildcats were in the middle of a five-game losing streak, and yet more than 52,000 fans showed up to watch the Wildcats drop a goose egg against California.

In fact, attendance was so bad under Mackovic, and hopes were dashed so quickly, that the highest attendance at Arizona Stadium was a measly 48,446 for the season opener against NAU in 2002.

Not even our rivalry game with ASU that year could garner more fan support than that - our situation was so lifeless even Sun Devil fans decided to save their gas money rather than fill our stadium with maroon and gold.

Mike Stoops has been a defibrillator for a dying program from day one, his reputation and success with Oklahoma giving him the ability from which to recharge our program with new life full of optimism and enthusiasm. With our entire city aching for something to root for, they bought into the program in a big way.

The excitement was undeniable. The football team may not have been winning, but Stoops clearly was. Fox Sports Net went as far as to dedicate a camera to monitoring his animated sideline behavior, which often saw him leaping in the air and moving side to side upon nearly every snap.

With Stoops at the helm last season, people no longer sat in the nosebleed sections because they didn't want to be caught on camera at another UA blowout loss - they were up there because the rest of the stadium was nearly filled. Average attendance per game was the highest by far since the 1999 campaign, in which hopes were high after Arizona's victory over Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl the previous season.

Yet attendance can be a fickle indicator of the community and administration's pleasure with the football coach. Dick Tomey had one of his lowest overall attendance averages in 1997, a year in which he guided the Wildcats to a 7-5 record and a win in the Insight.com Bowl.

The final year of Tomey's 14-year career at Arizona saw the team run out to a 5-1 start before closing the season on a five-game losing streak. Yet the average attendance for that 2000 season was 49,439 - roughly 650 people a game fewer than what Mike Stoops was able to fill the stadium with in 2004.

The moral of the story? The fans get greedy. The fans get impatient. Then the team gets tossed aside in the hype of the upcoming series of scrimmages and exhibition games the basketball team has slated for November.

True, Arizona was never a consistent powerhouse under Tomey. Yet, key members of our "Desert Swarm" defense graced the cover of Sports Illustrated as Arizona was lauded as the nation's preseason No. 1 team in 1994. Tomey led the Wildcats to seven bowl appearances, more than any other coach in Arizona history, which included wins in the Copper Bowl, Insight.com Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and Holiday Bowl.

There is little doubt Stoops has the ability to do even more at Arizona than what Dick Tomey was able to accomplish in his 14 years. He has managed to keep a city excited about football despite most media outlets picking the Wildcats to finish no higher than eighth in the Pac-10 this fall.

He pulled in big name recruits, such as freshman quarterback Willie Tuitama, with little more than hard work, perseverance and the willingness to put his name on the line as a guy that people should want to play for.

Everything for the future looks bright, and Arizona has all the makings of being built into a quality football program in the near future - one that refuses to be the doormat that the Mackovic teams became.

As of right now, however, Stoops has a big morale-boosting win over ASU, an excellent recruiting class, and a large fan-base living on hope. Those three things will only last as long as the win column this season exceeds that of last year.

If it doesn't, expect the cynics and critics to slowly emerge from hiding and start poking holes in the bubble of optimism that protects Stoops' team.