Nov. 12, 2008
Lobo Football
What: Lobos at Colorado State
When: 12:06 p.m., Saturday
Where: Hughes Stadium, Fort Collins, Colo.
Television: The Mtn. (Comcast ch. 276, DirecTV ch. 616)
Radio: 770 KKOB-AM
By Richard Stevens
Senior Writer/GoLobos.com
There are a lot of reasons that Zach Arnett never should have been a Lobo.
One reason? His size. Zach Arnett, at 5-foot-10, 200 pounds, simply is too small to be a major-college linebacker. Lobo coach Rocky Long probably was lucky he wasn’t charged with reckless endangerment of a minor when Arnett came to the University of New Mexico football field out of Albuquerque’s La Cueva High.
“When I first saw Zach, I was wondering where he was going to play,” said Lobo senior safety Blake Ligon. “They said, `Linebacker.’ I said, `Well, OK,’ I was thinking running back, maybe kicker.” UNM linebacker coach Tony White, in his first season at UNM, said when he was first introduced to Arnett he thought he was meeting a team manager.
Then there is the speed thing with Arnett. The Lobo senior never will be nicknamed “Lightnin’ Zach,” or “Flash Arnett.” Could Long really expect Arnett to chase down the speed burners of the Mountain West Conference? And then survive the impact?
“Zach has so much heart and dedication to what he is doing out there, you can’t stop him,” said Ligon. “Whenever you have a heart and a motor like he does, you can’t keep him down. He just keeps coming and coming and eventually he’ll get to you.”
There was another hurdle to Arnett becoming a Lobo: the head man. In 2005, Coach Long did his best to recruit over Arnett by doing what coaches are supposed to do. Long went looking for a bigger, better, faster linebacker.
Long found bigger. Long found faster. He couldn’t find better.
“Size was the drawback. Zach didn`t have the body of a Division I linebacker,” said Long. “We knew he was good enough, but you always look for the ultimate guy, who fits the physical description, too. We found a whole lot of guys who were bigger and faster than Zach, but they weren’t as good as Zach.”
Arnett actually came to UNM on a baseball scholarship, but when he walked onto the football team, Long had to make a decision on whether to give Arnett a football scholarship. After watching Arnett in the preseason drills for the 2005 season, Long made a decision. Arnett was taken off his baseball scholarship and given a football ride.
Good call. Going into Saturday’s game at Colorado State, Arnett is No. 2 on the team in tackles at 84 behind Clint McPeek’s 96. He has 11.0 tackles for a loss (eight solo, six assisted). He is No. 5 in the nation in forced fumbles.
He might be No. 1 in the nation in the category of passion for football. It doesn’t seem to take much to get Arnett fired up to play football. Just point him at somebody in a different colored uniform and the sparks fly.
“Zach plays the game with passion,” said Long. “There are a lot of guys who play hard, but they don’t combine that with passion. There are guys who like to play football, but don’t love it. For Zach, he’s one of those guys where football is just part of his life.
“Maybe with his size, it has to be that way.”
Arnett’s size, and his success despite that size, is not one of Arnett’s favorite subjects. He has heard the question too many times before. You ask him about it and he turns his head, kind of sneers and says, “ahhh.”
It’s like Arnett doesn’t want to think about size as a factor in the way he plays football.
Like Long said, maybe it has to be that way.
Still, Arnett is a great example of how the fight in a competitor often is more important than the size of the competitor. With Arnett, heart and want-to has made him big enough, fast enough, good enough.
“He’s the prototype of that,” said Ligon. “You aren’t going to find too many people who are 5-10, 200 pounds, who can go against all those big offensive linemen and have the success that Zach has.
“He opens a lot of people’s eyes. If you are a high school player watching Zach, you can see that you don’t have to be the biggest guy out there to play at this level and have an impact on a team.”
Arnett will not go down with the UNM greats at the linebacker spot; Lobos like Brian Urlacher, Johnny Jackson, Houston Ross, Blake Irwin. Arnett has 192 career tackles going into the CSU game. Jackson, UNM’s career leader, had 483. But Arnett will be remembered by his coach as a special Lobo.
“He’ll be one of those guys you’ll remember,” said Long. “There have been five or six players in the 11 years I’ve been here who have played full speed on every snap. It’s real unusual to find a kid who can do that every time and Zach is one of those guys.”
Editor’s note: Richard Stevens is a former Associate Sports Editor and sports columnist for The Albuquerque Tribune. You can reach him at rstevens50@comcast.net. Previous articles are available at The Richard Stevens Corner