The first time Arizona’s football and (women’s) basketball teams were scheduled to play on the same day, overlapping one another, was November 1917.
According to Abe Chanin’s wonderful book “They Fought Like Wildcats,” UA football coach/athletic director Pop McKale did not approve of the women’s basketball team playing a game on the same afternoon at Herring Hall, then the UA’s basketball arena.
The book reports that McKale asked a colleague to secretly turn on a firehose at the gymnasium the night before the basketball game. The mission was successful. The gymnasium floor was flooded, unplayable the next day. McKale and the football team had the day to themselves.
Now, 107 years later, Arizona’s football team and men’s basketball team have only overlapped twice since 1917, in action on the same day at close to the same time: 1970 and 2024.
On Friday, no one called for a firehose to be used, although it might’ve benefitted the UA basketball team and prevented their loss at Wisconsin.
On Nov. 25, 1989, the Wildcats beat ASU in Tempe 28-10 in a football game that started at 3:30 p.m. and was televised on Fox Sports Arizona. At 2 p.m. that day, Arizona’s basketball team beat No. 6 Michigan 82-75 in the Hall of Fame game in Springfield, Mass., televised on ABC.
The only time the football and basketball teams had home games the same day was Dec. 5, 1970. Arizona lost football’s Territorial Cup to ASU 10-6 at 7:30 p.m., a few hours earlier, 4 p.m., the UA men’s basketball team beat Butler 108-92 at Bear Down Gym.
The football game sold out at 38,000. The basketball game attracted 2,800.
When the Wildcats and Houston began Friday about 8:20 p.m., the UA-Wisconsin basketball game was at halftime. The crowd at Arizona Stadium looked to be somewhere near 20,000, if that. Announced attendance was 38,538, based on tickets sold.
The only time I remember a smaller-looking audience was when Arizona played Louisiana a week after the 2011 Territorial Cup. Coach Mike Stoops had been fired six weeks earlier; Arizona was 3-8, and on that late-November afternoon, interim coach Tim Kish led the Wildcats to a 45-37 victory. Attendance was announced at 38,819, but it couldn’t have been more than 15,000 to 17,000.
This time, instead of scuttling the UA basketball team to help with football attendance, the school aired the UA-Wisconsin game on the Jumbotron at Arizona Stadium, hoping to increase attendance.
Arizona fans watch the Wildcats basketball game against Wisconsin on the scoreboard screen before the football team kicked off against Houston on Nov. 15, 2024.
It didn’t work. About 30,000 seats remained empty until and after kickoff. Losing five straight games had the same effect a firehose did in 1917.
