Washington, Arizona sold on avoiding cellar
As the Arizona and Washington football teams hustle into Husky Stadium, trying to be on time for today’s 12:30 p.m. kickoff, a word of advice:
Don’t be last.
There are no bowl possibilities for these two, no national rankings, no live TV, not much of anything left except a final shred of self-respect.
It’s one team struggling to rebuild with a new coach facing another team that has come unraveled and announced a coaching change just this week, both trying to avoid sole ownership of last place in the Pacific-10 Conference standings.
This is 1-7 against 1-7, Southern California against California only in reverse, probably a last-ditch reprieve for someone.
“I’m sure both teams feel the same way – it’s very crucial,” said Arizona junior free safety Darrell Brooks, one of the few players involved in this game having a season worthy of all-conference consideration. “Neither team wants to be in the basement of the Pac-10. We’re playing for pride now.”
Said ousted UW coach Keith Gilbertson, “I think there will be a lot of energy on the field.”
On Monday, Gilbertson announced that he and his staff had been forced to resign, with the move made now rather than at season’s end to try and limit outside distractions on his current players and salvage the latest recruiting efforts. The head coach and his nine assistants will guide the team through its final three games, and then a search for a new leader will begin.
Meantime, the Huskies, usually a Pac-10 contender and a Rose Bowl team four seasons ago, are trying to avoid the indignity of finishing last.
That’s happened to UW on six previous occasions in the 89-year history of the conference, most recently in 1973.
The Huskies also need a victory to avoid another calamity. Should they lose out, they would finish 1-10, the worst record in the school’s 115 seasons of football, surpassing a 1-9 showing in ‘69. Curiously, the guys in purple didn’t finish last in the conference with that low-water mark, with their lone victory over Washington State instead banishing the even more tepid Cougars to the cellar that year.
Arizona has been a Pac-10 member since 1978, and wound up as the last-place team once – last year.
Losing in bunches is one thing, but losing more than anyone else is total dishonor.
“It’s big because we are going to be last if we lose, and it’s an embarrassment in any sport here, to be a bottom-feeder at the University of Washington,” Huskies sophomore linebacker Scott White said. “It’ll be an embarrassment because I have a lot of friends at Arizona. This has been a weird year.”
The Wildcats enter this contest with a seven-game losing streak, while the Huskies have dropped three in a row. Arizona has a fairly fresh memory of beating the Huskies 27-22 in Tucson exactly a year ago. In that outing, tailback Mike Bell broke touchdown runs of 67, 69 and 37 for the winning side, churning out a career-best 222 yards rushing on 28 carries.
The hard-boiled Mike Stoops was hired once the Wildcats completed a 2-9 season, leaving Oklahoma and his older brother Bob’s coaching staff behind. This guy is extremely intense. Northwest reporters still haven’t forgotten a pre-Rose Bowl news conference two years ago, before the Sooners and WSU met in Pasadena, when the Stoops brothers sat side by side and answered every question as if they were chewing glass, giving off a decided edge if not perpetual smolder.
Mike Stoops has his younger brother, Mark, on his Arizona staff, as the secondary coach.
“They coach as if they’re still playing,” said Brooks of two guys who were take-no-prisoners safeties at Iowa. “It kind of reciprocates through the players. You try to play your hearts out for them.”