Arizona beat NAU 77-13 last year, gaining a school-record 792 yards, and the Wildcats piled it on, scoring three late touchdowns.
It meant Rich Rodriguez had won 14 of his last 18 games and that the season’s next game, against UCLA, would be a sellout, 56,004 fans, at Arizona Stadium.
The Wildcats climbed to No. 16 in the AP poll. Big time.
And then everything changed. UCLA won 56-30, and a week later the Wildcats lost 55-17 at Stanford.
Since that show-no-mercy blowout over the Lumberjacks, the Wildcats have become NAU, a punching bag to Pac-12 opponents, going 3-12 in the conference, allowing an average of 47 points in those games.
But few were prepared for the scope of Saturday’s 69-7 loss at Washington State, a defeat so humbling that it had statisticians wondering when an Arizona football team had ever been so broken.
You could start with a 78-7 loss to USC in 1928, the year before Arizona Stadium opened. On Saturday, had the Cougars kept starting QB Luke Falk on the field for the final 16 minutes, Wazzu might’ve challenged that 1928 football liquidation.
After Saturday’s game at WSU, Cougars coach Mike Leach told reporters “I’ve been on both sides of these.”
And, indeed, Leach’s 2000 Texas Tech team was clobbered 56-3 by Nebraska.
Given time, Leach fought back. In ’04, Texas Tech got full payback, whipping the Cornhuskers 70-10. What goes around comes around, even in college football.
Now it’s Arizona’s turn to fight back, because if this isn’t the bottom, what is?
