Rosters this fall will be 105, so you do the math
It’s been a little more than two months since Arizona finished a massively disappointing 2024 season with a blowout loss at home to ASU. It will be almost another seven months before the Wildcats will play again, hosting Hawaii on Aug. 30.
And while the uniforms will be the same, not much else will.
Arizona has added 53 players this offseason, including a half dozen that signed Wednesday. With the NCAA set to implement a 105-player cap to football rosters this fall, that means more than half of the 2025 team will be newcomers.
“It has been an exciting and intense process for us,” UA coach Brent Brennan said Wednesday. “We feel great about the young people that we have added to our football program here at U of A.”
Arizona’s additions include 30 transfers, 25 from the portal and five from junior colleges, along with 23 high school prospects. The Wildcats signed 22 linemen (12 offensive, 10 defensive) and picked up 16 from Texas, more than double the number from the Lone Star State on last year’s roster.
From a rankings standpoint, Arizona has signed the No. 51 prep/JUCO class and the No. 46 group of transfers. That’s ninth and 10th in the Big 12, respectively.
Brennan said he and his staff hosted 59 official visits in a 25-day span, cramming what used to be a full recruiting cycle pre-portal into one month. Most of the visits lasted a day, 36 hours tops.
“What we joke about as a staff is that portal recruiting is like speed dating, but at the end of it you’re getting married,” Brennan said. “The identification process of these people in the portal and how quickly those decisions had to be made was amazing and insane at the same time. When you think about our own recruiting process for a high school player, you’re thinking about 12, 18, 24, months? Well, this was sometimes five hours. It was a seven day a week process. It wasn’t like we took a day off in the middle of it.”
According to Justin Spears of the Arizona Daily Star, the UA’s 22 linemen added average 306.4 pounds. Brennan said getting bigger across the board in the trenches was a majority priority and a key to a quick rebuild.
“The best place to start is O-line and D-line, because if you can run the ball and stop the run you can be in every football game,” he said. “We went back through the tape, and even on game day, I just felt like we were not quite as big. Some of our guys were, but in terms of the depth and the consistency of it was just not as much. We knew we had to address that because it wasn’t just about first-line players. It was about creating an incredible amount of competition in that space, so that that competition forces them to elevate.”
Despite the massive turnover, Arizona will be a much more experienced team in 2025. Of the 25 transfers added from the portal, 19 have already spent at least three years at the Division I or II level and a dozen are going into their fifth or sixth season of college football.
That part plays into what Brennan said last month when he said Arizona was recruiting for the 2025 team. But Brennan has also said he wants Arizona to be a developmental program first and a fill-the-holes one second.
“I think both things can be true,” he said. “I think we can be developmental, and also have to recruit for the immediate team. That was Coach Tomey’s thing. He always said, we are recruiting for this year’s team. That was a huge thing for him. And as we put this roster again, it was such a big changeover. In years past, before the portal, (it) depended on how many kids you graduated. So if you’ve got a young team, you might sign 17 kids.
“Now, if you’re looking at 40, 50, 60 players, you’re going to have to sign some players in that group that are developmental and then also ready to play. And you’re hoping that the guys that are ready to play help push the younger guys and accelerate their development.”
Of the 53 newcomers, 33 have enrolled in school and will participate in spring practice. That’s set to begin in mid-Mach.
Arizona football 2025 roster, by the numbers
- Newcomers: 53
- Transfer portal additions: 25
- JUCO transfers: 5
- High school recruits: 23
By position
- QB: 3
- RB: 5
- WR: 6
- TE: 2
- OL: 12
- DL: 10
- LB: 5
- DB: 10
By class
- Senior: 17
- Junior: 8
- Sophomore: 5
- Freshman: 23
By home state
- California: 19
- Texas: 16
- Arizona: 5
- Florida: 2
- Georgia: 2
- Hawaii: 2
- South Carolina: 2
- Maryland: 1
- Nevada: 1
- New Mexico: 1
- New York: 1
- Pennsylvania: 1