Arizona Wildcats 'understand the significance' of Territorial Cup game

Jedd Fisch doesn’t need much to motivate the No. 16-ranked Arizona Wildcats for their upcoming rivalry game against the Arizona State Sun Devils in Tempe on Saturday.

Just one quick Google search provides an incentive for Arizona to beat its rival and reclaim the Territorial Cup.

“Yeah, I just showed them a billboard,” the Arizona head coach said during his Monday news conference, two days after the Wildcats won their fifth straight game of the season by routing No. 22 Utah.

Fisch, normally thorough with every answer during his media availabilities, was blunt.

The billboard?

A now non-existent maroon billboard, bought through Clear Channel Outdoor from ASU boosters, on Interstate-10 West between Tucson and Phoenix with mustard-yellow lettering. “No pity for the kitty,” emblazoned on the billboard and bookended with the score (70-7) of the 2020 Territorial Cup game, which led to the firing of UA coach Kevin Sumlin.

“I recognize the importance of the game, because I know I was hired after it,” Fisch said.

When Fisch was first hired, one of his first orders of business was to meet with former UA football players from multiple generations via Zoom to familiarize himself with the building blocks of the program. Shortly after Arizona inked Fisch, who was a quarterbacks coach for the New England Patriots, he met with ex-Patriot and UA legend Tedy Bruschi for breakfast.

“My job was to introduce myself to them and their job was to inform me a little bit about Arizona football,” Fisch said. “Clearly the game itself of the Territorial Cup is one of the most important parts of Arizona football.”

Losing to ASU didn’t stop when Fisch was hired — and neither did the billboards. When the Wildcats lost to the Sun Devils in 2021, Fisch’s inaugural season, for the fifth straight year, the billboard was updated with the caption “Nothing Personal,” mocking Arizona’s “It’s Personal” mantra under Fisch. “No pity for the kitty” was at the bottom of the billboard and five mustard-colored Territorial Cups were laid out across the billboard along with the score of each win.

Since then, it’s always been personal. Sometimes a little too personal, like Arizona’s win over ASU last season, which had a bench-clearing fight that led to suspensions that carried over into this season. Defensive tackle Tia Savea was suspended for the first half of the Wildcats’ 2023 season opener against Northern Arizona. Cornerback Christian Roland-Wallace, who transferred to USC, was suspended for a half.

With Arizona’s postseason fate already determined, “we can’t be nearly as undisciplined at the end of last year or at the end of that game, I should say,” Fisch said.

“I don’t think either team was playing for a bowl game. Guys were getting kicked out of the game, guys were suspended for the first half of next game. We’ve got another game to play, if not two,” he added. “We can’t be making any undisciplined moves that could prevent us from being able to be a full deck for the bowl season.

“Rivalry games are fantastic and are great and motivational, but you still need to be disciplined. You still can’t play in a manner that you’re not understanding the game of football, first and foremost. I think it’s big for us to have something afterwards. It’ll force us to get back on the bus after the game and not try to stay in Scottsdale, and get back to work on Sunday ... and find out what bowl we’re heading to.”

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Arizona could have another game added to its schedule between Saturday and the soon-to-be-revealed bowl game. The Wildcats are still in contention for the Pac-12 championship game on Dec. 1 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Arizona last played in the conference title game against Oregon at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, during the 2014 season.

If No. 11 Oregon State upsets No. 6 Oregon in Eugene and Arizona wins, the Wildcats will have a rematch with undefeated and fifth-ranked Washington.

“There’s no concern, at all, in my mind about the emotions of our team for this game. We’re playing our bitter rival. It is a duel in the desert. It is two teams in the state of Arizona going at it,” Fisch said. “I have no concern that no matter what happens on Friday night between the two Oregon schools that our play will be any different than 1:30 p.m. on Saturday.”

With a glass-half-full perspective on the season, Fisch added, “Our guys understand the significance of that game. I told our team yesterday, ‘We’re Pac-12 South champions. They just decided to change the rules of the Pac-12 championship game a year ago.’”

He’s not wrong. If the conference had divisions, the Wildcats would have already clinched the best record in their pod between ASU, Colorado, Utah, UCLA and USC.

“We clinched the Pac-12 South,” Fisch said. “Our guys understand that’s a nice little feather in their cap.”

Regardless of Arizona’s success this season, “there’s no overconfidence with this team,” Fisch said.

“There’s not a lot of people that talk about our program. Not a lot of people talk about our team,” Fisch said. “Our guys are just scrappy and hard-nosed and got passed over by a lot of programs to come here, and we like it that way. We’re going to continue live in that world, remind ourselves of that and do everything we can to get to this next win. If we can get there on Saturday to nine (wins), that’s great. But for us, it’s just a matter of remembering where we came from.”

The Cats have come a long way since the billboard days.

Extra points

Fisch, on converting 7 of 11 third downs against Utah, which entered Saturday as the top third-down defense in college football: “Very efficient on third down. We executed the plan we wanted to put into place. We felt that we had some good answers to what they do on third down, and I also felt like our players did a great job of executing some plays outside of the framework of the play. ... I was really proud of our guys on third down, for sure.”

Arizona wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan was left off the 10-player Biletnikoff Award semifinalist group on Monday after making the midseason watch list last week. Oregon’s Troy Franklin and Washington’s Rome Odunze are the Pac-12’s remaining representatives for the Biletnikoff Award.

UA defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen was removed from contention for the Broyles Award, a national accolade given to college football’s top assistant coach. The Broyles Award selection committee announced their 15-coach semifinalists on Monday.

Tucson native and Atlanta Falcons rookie running back Bijan Robinson was on the sidelines for the Arizona-Utah game on Saturday. The former Salpointe Catholic High School and Texas Longhorns star visited Tucson with the Falcons on a bye after playing the Arizona Cardinals on Nov. 12 in Glendale.