Your house payment is late, there is a constant ringing in your ears, your feet hurt, you’re 20 pounds overweight and a guy at the garage tells you your car’s transmission is shot.
And then you spend your last buck to play the lottery.
Arizona 56, ASU 35.
Maybe the ringing in your ears doesn’t go away but the pain is gone.
You drink from the Territorial Cup.
Arizona awoke Friday as potentially the worst football team in school history. By bedtime, it found someone worse: the Sun Devils.
With 8:29 remaining at Arizona Stadium, killing the clock with a 49-35 lead, UA fans reacted loudly when Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” played over the PA system. The crowd sang a happy song for the first time all season.
“Ooooh, ooooh, we’re halfway there. ….”
And then Samajie Grant ran 63 yards for a touchdown.
The Wildcats were all the way there. The football gods answered.
Arizona even got its celebration right. A team that finishes 3-9 can’t get carried away; it can’t loft Rich Rodriguez onto its shoulders, kiss the turf or dance for ESPN’s cameras. Nobody did that. The Wildcats modestly lifted the Territorial Cup and passed it around before walking off the field.
They didn’t go home champions, but neither did they go home losers. If you’re going to win one game all year, make sure it’s the game against Arizona State.
The Wildcats hadn’t won a game for 69 days; they entered the Territorial Cup without knowing what it was to lead for 328 minutes and 12 seconds of game time dating to an Oct. 8 contest in Salt Lake City.
For the first time since RichRod and his seniors filmed a movie-parody video of “The Gladiator” in August, the coach’s words rang true: “Are You Not Entertained?”
The Wildcats swung a mighty sword when least expected.
All kinds of crazy, unexpected stuff has broken out during 117 years of the UA-ASU rivalry, and maybe someday football historians will remember Territorial Cup 2016 for its odd delivery.
I mean, the Sun Devils entered the game with the worst passing defense in college football history, allowing 383 yards per game. But in the X and O sessions at Arizona’s Lowell-Stevens football plant, RichRod and his schemers thought a better way to attack the Sun Devils was to run on them.
The batter was expecting a fastball. Arizona threw curves.
The Wildcats completed just 3 of 8 passes for 77 yards, all the fewest totals in RichRod’s 65 games at Arizona. UA coaches felt they could gash the Sun Devils with quarterback Brandon Dawkins’ speed and elusiveness to the outside, thereby making ASU vulnerable and soft up the middle.
Soft? It was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
Incredibly, Arizona rushed for a school-record 511 yards against the NCAA’s worst pass defense team. It was almost like a video game, Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, with Arizona hungrily eating up yards the way you’d ask for seconds (or thirds) at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
On Friday, dessert was served, too.
ASU completed its season (most likely) without a bowl game and a school-record worst 521 yards allowed per game. How bad is that? It’s No. 125 of 128 FBS schools. In a season in which Arizona was widely criticized for a leaky defense, allowing 470 yards per game, it waited 12 weeks to find someone worse.
The offseason won’t be much fun in Tucson or Tempe, and it could be the loser of next year’s Territorial Cup will finish last in the Pac-12 South and its coach will get fired. But can you imagine the damage had Arizona lost again to ASU and finished 0-9 in conference?
Next season’s ticket marketing campaign would’ve been something like “Plenty of Seats Available.”
The rewards were small at Arizona this season but they were rewards nonetheless.
Seeing senior linebacker Jake Matthews on Senior Day, walking to midfield, embracing his mother and father. That’s a win. Matthews wrecked his foot last year and it didn’t fully heal. But on Saturday, he grabbed the Territorial Cup after the game and smiled the way someone who had gone 12-0 would smile.
Seeing senior defensive lineman Sani Fuimaono recover a fumble that led to a 28-7 lead was a triumph.
He held onto the ball like it he would never let go. Fuimaono arrived at Arizona in 2011, in the Mike Stoops years, served a two-year Mormon mission, became a husband and father and watched helplessly as his position coach and defensive coordinator were fired.
He has seen it all, but on Friday night, Fuimaono went out a winner.
“Ain’t no better feeling,” he said.
