The Guy Who Knows All Responds To Your Queries. By Tom Danehy EVERYBODY'S GOT QUESTIONS, but only I have the answers. (Well, at least only I have these answers.) Q: Hey Answer Dude, what do you think of the incoming class of freshman that Arizona Wildcat football coach Dick Tomey just signed? A: If you want an intelligent answer to that question, ask me again in about three years. This has got to be the second biggest waste of space in the local sports pages (next to any coverage of ASU). Think about it. You've got a bunch of high school kids who starred for their prep teams coming to a Division I college team. Occasionally you'll get a can't-miss prospect who'll go somewhere other than the UA, and half the time the "can't-miss" ends up missing, anyway. Who knows what's going to happen? Some of these kids won't even show up at school in August because of grades or signing to play baseball or whatever. Others basically will have peaked athletically in high school and won't be much help to the program. Others will have trouble at the UA and drift away from the program. And finally, some will be good students, remain good citizens, progress athletically and help the Wildcats get back to where they can fall just short of the Rose Bowl again. All of the above is guaranteed to happen with every single class of recruits the UA gets. No one will dispute that. The trick is figuring out which kids will fall into which category. The permutations are staggering. For a local sports fan (like my demented neighbor and good friend, Johnny) to sit there and try to figure out which 17-year-old kids he's going to be cheering for over the next half-decade is nuts. The coaches who recruit these kids don't know which ones are going to work out, and the coaches do this stuff for a well-paid living 365 days a year. Besides, the success of Tomey's Wildcats over the past decade was built on guys at whom other colleges turned up their noses. Show me a headline which reads, "UA signs a bunch of slow, undersized overachievers," and I might read the article. Until then, it's just a list of names in the paper. I wish them all the best of luck, but please allow me to hold my enthusiasm until, like, maybe when they set foot on campus. Q: Get anything interesting in the mail lately, Answer Dude? A: No, but thanks for asking, Mom. Actually, I have received a couple mysterious, unsigned, typed notes suggesting that I look into alleged improprieties in the Wildcat men's basketball program. First, let me say that I think Lute Olson runs a very clean program. He flirted with danger once with Chris Mills, but Lute found it difficult to coach while holding his nose, so he'll never go down that road again. More importantly, as someone once said (most haughtily), I'm a writer, not a journalist. (I'm not sure who said that, because that would require research on my part, and well, I'm a writer, not a researcher, either.) Here in Tucson (with precious few exceptions), the difference is quite clear. A writer gets to make stuff up, while a journalist rewrites press releases. So, my anonymous friend, you'd be better off sending that stuff to the Star. They've had a jones for Lute for years. But thanks for thinking of me. Q: When it came time to deliver the opposing view to President Clinton's State of the Union Address, the Republicans managed to find a Christian conservative African-American, J.C. Watts. What does "J.C." stand for? A: Tom. Q: What's the biggest surprise in the Pac-10 basketball race so far? A: As I write this, USC is tied for first place in the conference. Who knew Henry Bibby could coach? One of the unwritten job descriptions of a basketball coach is as second father to the players. And since he sucked so bad as a first father to Mike Bibby... It's going to be a wild second half. Each of the four teams tied for first in the league has at least one hard-to-explain loss (the UA has two) which may help determine the conference championship. If Washington can play tough in the second half, the Pac-10 has a real chance of having five teams make the NCAA Tournament. Not bad. Q: What's new on TV? A: I remember reading about a local cable operation back east somewhere which had one channel on which they showed a roaring fire in a fireplace 24 hours a day, and another with a close-up of a fish-filled aquarium. Both were very popular. Well, TCI has improved on that (if ever so slightly) with the new Home and Garden cable channel. Just imagine, 24 hours a day of a bunch of phlegm-wads showing us how to plant tulip bulbs or re-caulk the bathtub. They're touting this as "the fastest-growing cable channel in America." Well, of course it is. When you go from zero to one, that's an infinite increase. To make room for it, they're dumping "E," the entertainment channel. I won't miss E that much. I watched Talk Soup from time to time, but not religiously like I did when Greg Kinnear was the host. But I know my Weekly homie Jim Nintzel will miss the specials like Erotica '94 and Super Models At Play. Q: How about Jones Cable? A: They're certainly better than TCI. At least Jones still has WGN. I'm planning to watch a few Cubs games this year just to anger my TCI friends. Q: What's going on in the UA Athletic Department? A: Well, as always, there's fund raising. A few people are busy trying to clear up some shelf space for the next NCAA championship trophy that the softball team is going to win, but most of the efforts are being focused on clearing up the big mystery as to how did UA center Donnell Harris ever get a scholarship.

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