Hansen: Wildcats' upset win cause for another happy dance

Arizona receiver David Richards poured an ice container over Rich Rodriguez’s head at 11:40 Saturday night and the party began at Arizona Stadium.

A few thousand fans from the Zona Zoo emptied onto the field, and a season that had been lost was found.

Arizona beat Utah 37-30 in double overtime, irretrievably damaging the Utes’ Dream Season, and simultaneously reviving the Wildcats and likely putting them into a bowl game.

If you fell asleep and missed it, you don’t know the half of it. The Wildcats won even though the best player on the field, quarterback Anu Solomon, was injured and forced from the game with 9:25 remaining. Utah, which had more momentum than an onrushing train, still couldn’t finish the Wildcats.

All of those who predicted the Wildcats to finish the season with four straight losses, especially me, are hereby sentenced to a month of eating mush.

It was the seventh time since 1982 that Arizona beat a top-10 team at home in November, and it could be that none of them were more welcome and unexpected.

“It just gave me the chills,” RichRod said.

The Wildcats were physical and feisty. In a season in which so much has gone wrong and so many key players have been injured, the physical-and-feisty approach was about the only combination that would’ve worked against a team of Utah’s ilk.

RichRod is now 4-0 against Utah. It probably seems like 40-0 to the Utes.

The UA season began with RichRod dancing the Nae Nae at the 50-yard line, driving a Ferrari and portraying James Bond in a made-to-impress video, and never straying too far from the Territorial Cup, which occupies a sacred space in his office.

It continued Saturday with another happy dance.

Three months ago, the UA was so taken with its football coach that it expedited payment of a $6 million retention bonus due in 2022, guaranteeing RichRod 25 percent of the cash next June, and allowing him to fully cash out in 2020.

It also extended his contract through 2020; indeed, being Arizona’s football coach had become a little piece of heaven and a big slice of high finance.

And when the home season ended late Saturday night, Arizona Stadium was rocking as if those damaging losses to UCLA and Washington State had been forgotten.

Saturday began with a double sense of dread: 1, that the reeling Wildcats could lose to ASU in Saturday’s Territorial Cup and, 2, then lose their coach to some faraway dot on the football map, in Virginia or South Carolina or who knows where?

Starting over again is not what anyone had in mind when RichRod cleared debris from the Mike Stoops years, won 31 of his first 47 games and erected a Pac-12 South championship banner at the stadium.

Starting. Over. Again. Such has been the curse of UA football since Jim Young left for Purdue in 1977.

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RichRod wouldn’t have to apologize if he left for some place close to his West Virginia home. That’s life. But over the last week or so, he has reaffirmed his willingness to stay at Arizona and see the Wildcats through this fractured season and beyond.

Who told me this? Who said that RichRod will not bail out?

Let’s just say two little angels.

Before kickoff Saturday night, Hall of Fame horse trainer Bob Baffert stood in the lobby of the House that RichRod Occupies and spoke fondly about “two little angels” riding with his Triple Crown winner, American Pharaoh.

Baffert was referring to his late parents, Bill and Ellie, whom he suspects added the final pieces of charm to Pharaoh’s Triple Crown.

The angels whispering in my ears do not ride a horse nor live in the great beyond. But ever since the football shows started to include RichRod-to-Virginia Tech in all the daily chatter, UA athletic director Greg Byrne has gotten in front of the issue.

The school wanted RichRod to confirm his willingness to stay in Tucson, and RichRod has done so. Don’t doubt the angels.

There are myriad reasons that a coach from West Virginia would consider relocating to the East, or South, but RichRod enjoys wearing shorts to work, he enjoys the climate in Tucson, covets watching a sunset from his Ventana Canyon patio, puffing on a cigar, looking all the way to Mexico.

As proved again Saturday, he isn’t bowed by the Pac-12 South competition. His style is to plow straight ahead.

Utah got chewed up by the coach and the team that wouldn’t quit.

If all things work out, RichRod will work at the Lowell-Stevens Football complex for another decade, until he’s 60-something, and do what Jim Young, Larry Smith and Dick Tomey were unable to do: walk into the sunset a Wildcat for life.

Before Saturday’s game, RichRod made his way through the Wildcat Walk, tapped the statue of Button Salmon for luck, and kept his game face stashed until kickoff. On Senior Night, the coach acted as a host/father, not a coach.

He embraced all 20 of his seniors as they left the north end zone tunnel, one after another, all trailed by visitors from all parts of the map. Senior linebacker Anthony Smothers was accompanied by 21 friends and family members. Tackle Lene Maiava had 17 people in his entourage.

RichRod greeted them all. The Utah game would have to wait.

Four hours later, RichRod led a chorus of “Bear Down, Arizona” in the locker room and hugged his seniors all over again.

If you are the football coach at Arizona, it was a very good day.