Arizona, which plays football at Iowa on Sept. 19, is ranked 45th ...

... According to the New York Times' Quad, which has been counting teams down from 120 to 1 with one each day. (Iowa's number hasn't come up yet.)

Pertinent notes from the piece:

The Wildcat defense, so improved last fall, lost four starters, all in the back seven.

The Arizona offense lost two of the most accomplished skill players in school history.

There's more.

Arizona has the nation's best (tight end) at the position in the junior Rob Gronkowski, who at a massive 6-foot-6 and 265 pounds remains nimble enough to make any defensive back look silly in coverage. Many of the Pac-10's best have tried and failed at containing the junior, who led the team last fall with 10 touchdown receptions despite missing three games. Those scoring grabs came on 47 catches for 672 yards (14.3 yard per reception), earning Gronkowski third-team all-American accolades.

All four starters return on the Arizona (defensive) line, with the junior ends Brooks Reed and Ricky Elmore joining four Wildcats with staring experience on the inside: Earl Mitchell, Donald Horton, Lolomana Mikaele and Kaniela Tuipulotu. The most exciting player in this group is Brooks, who led Arizona with nine and a half tackles for loss and eight sacks a season ago. Most of that damage came over the second half of the season, with seven sacks coming in the final seven games.

... the offense is so quarterback-friendly that any player with a modicum of talent has the opportunity to be successful.

Head coach: Mike Stoops (Iowa '86), 25-34 after five seasons in Tucson. One cannot overstate how big last season was for Stoops and the Arizona program. After being unable to get over the hump in his first four seasons, Stoops led the Wildcats to an eight-win finish, returning the program to bowl play for the first time since in a decade. It took Stoops some time to get Arizona to this point. The team combined to 6-16 in 2004 and 2005, his first two seasons in charge, before coming very close to bowl play in both 2006 (6-6) and 2007 (5-7). After taking a slight step back in 2007, Stoops entered 2008 on the hot seat. After leading Arizona to its most wins in a season since going 12-1 in 1998, he has the program heading in the right direction. This is where the university pictured itself being when it hired Stoops away from Oklahoma late in 2003.