Court ruling gives Mahdi his 5th year back
A Colorado ruling hands Ismail Mahdi another season, Malcolm Hartzog is already the ‘pit bull’ of the secondary, and the opener against Northern Arizona is 10 days out.
Mahdi's fifth season just got real
Ismail Mahdi is back in the building. On3's Pete Nakos reported August 10 that Arizona is integrating the running back back into the program after a court ruling out of Colorado granted him a fifth year of eligibility — the same wave of litigation that has been reopening eligibility clocks across the sport all offseason. Mahdi rushed for 859 yards and 4 touchdowns last season, and getting him back changes the calculus in a backfield that had otherwise been building without him.
Brent Brennan has been saying for weeks that camp is one thing and Saturdays are another — per Yahoo Sports, he told reporters as camp wrapped that "practice is practice, games are games. We need to find out who looks … who can do it for real when the lights are on." Mahdi being back on the depth chart at all is one of the more concrete answers Arizona has gotten to that question before a snap has been played.
Last season ended on a four-game streak, then a stumble
Arizona closed last season on a run: a 24-20 home win over Kansas, a 30-24 road win at Cincinnati, a 41-17 blowout of Baylor back in Tucson, and a 23-7 handling of Arizona State on the road to close the regular season. Four straight, three of them by two scores or more, heading into the postseason.
It ended January 3 with a 19-24 loss to SMU that snapped the streak right there. That result is the last game on the books for this program, and it's last season's business now — not current form, just the note the 2026 opener is being written against.
The pit bull running the secondary
Nebraska transfer Malcolm Hartzog has become one of the leaders of Arizona's secondary, a source told On3's Pete Nakos in an August 27 report, with the program confident the 38-game veteran has upgraded the back end. Tucson.com went further, describing him as a "pit bull" who's made "a ton of growth" since arriving — "super twitchy and athletic" with the kind of short-area quickness that makes his 5-foot-9 frame beside the point.
He started 32 of those 38 games at Nebraska across corner, slot and safety before a lower-body injury ended his 2025 two games in. A healthy Hartzog with one season left to play is exactly the kind of transfer story that gets buried in August and matters by October — a secondary that Arizona is betting has already been fixed.
A 31.5-point date with the little brother up the highway
Arizona opens on September 5 vs. Northern Arizona, and the Lumberjacks are not a name to wave off. Ty Pennington returns for his third year as the starter after throwing for 3,116 yards and 19 touchdowns against just 4 interceptions last season, and NAU was voted fourth in the Big Sky preseason coaches poll off back-to-back winning seasons — its first such stretch in a decade, per SI's FCS preview. Their last result on record is a 28-48 loss at Weber State, from last season's playoff run, not a sign of a program in decline.
None of that has moved the number: the line opened with Arizona favored by 31.5, and the total was set at 56.5, which reads middling for a spread this size. The game kicks off at Casino Del Sol Stadium in Tucson at 8:30 PM. It's the first chance to see whether Brennan's answer about who "can do it for real when the lights are on" includes Mahdi in the backfield and Hartzog in the secondary.