Arizona Football: Part 1

I want to talk about Arizona football today. I think that this season has been the most stressful yet most exciting season of football of my college career, and possibly my entire life. This season, the Arizona Wildcats have been regarding the best team in the Pacific- 10 conference, and at others, among the bottom feeders as well. This kind of “roller coaster” season really goes overlooked and takes a toll on the community, the school, the whole student body, and especially, my heart. This year started out differently than any other in recent memory, with a realistic dream of roses. The winner of the pac-10 gets a trip to the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, and trip the Arizona Wildcats have never experienced in their rich football history. Also, instead of playing our arch rival ASU at the last game of the regular season, we were set to play the USC Trojans, since the two teams were the favorites to compete for the Rose Bowl. This prediction was a good one, but couldn’t have been more off. The cats came into the season with a quick two wins against a good Central Michigan team, and a bleak Northern Arizona, and then it was time for the first true test of the season, a showdown with the Iowa Hawkeyes, in Iowa City. This was also a alma mater game for head coach Mike Stoops, who was a Big 10 all conference player at Iowa. The cats were outplayed, and fell to a powerful Iowa team 27-17 which gave the Wildcats their first wake up call of the season, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. This Arizona team certainly didn’t have it easy, they play away from home for 30 straight days, good enough for the second longest streak in the nation, right behind Hawaii, who had 31. It was finally time for the pac-10 season to start, and our first match up was against the Oregon State Beavers. The Beavers have one of the best running backs in the country on their team, Jacquizz Rodgers, and he is always a threat to explode, and this game wouldn’t be any different. It looked as if the Wildcats had no answer for the tough offense of Oregon State, and were struggling to stay in the game. However, with our new quaterback Nick Fowles making his first start of the season, the cats had a renewed sense of play, and managed to hold out against the Beavers to move to one and zero in conference play. This was more than just a conference win for the Wildcats, it was the start of believing. Arizona has never been a good road team under Coach Stoops, but they played a hard game, and managed to pull it out, and not let it go at the end like in recent memory. In the upcoming weeks, we would travel to Seattle to take on the Huskies of Washington, and what happened there was most definitely a sight to see.