One Arizona Wildcats football fan is looking forward to something that’s never been done before in the program, and it’s not having a player win the Heisman Trophy.
It might not be advancing to the Rose Bowl either.
Going 12-0 — Chris Hale
If Arizona goes 12-0 — and it is a big “if” — the Wildcats would advance to the Pac-12 championship. Then, they would have to win a College Football Playoff semifinal and then the title game to go unbeaten. Fifteen games.
It’s OK to dream, isn’t it?
But we get it, Chris.
You want the unthinkable to happen.
According to Las Vegas odds, Arizona’s chances of winning the national title are 1,000 to 1. At least the Wildcats are not 10,000 to 1 odds to win it all like Rutgers, Illinois, Oregon State, Nevada and UNLV.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, the chance of Arizona winning the national title is the same as a fan catching a foul ball at a major league game. ESPN estimates the odds of that are 1,000 to 1.
I can just picture Arizona fans now at a Diamondbacks game — scurrying all over for a foul ball.
Quotable
“Yeah but I’m old, like I grew up establishing the run. I remember when [offenses] used to go under center. How about that? Crazy. And we actually had what they call ‘fullbacks’ back in those days … I’m a lot more comfortable when I feel that we can run the football.” — Arizona offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone, who has one of the deepest stables of running backs in the Pac-12 with J.J. Taylor, Gary Brightwell and Nathan Tilford as what might be the top three.
By the numbers
28:16
Arizona’s time of possession last year compared to 31:44 of its opponents. Take that for what it is worth. Only three times did Arizona possess the ball with more time than the opponent and the Wildcats went 1-2 in those games — beating Oregon with a season-high 36:09 time of possession and losing to Houston and ASU. That means in the games with less time of possession, Arizona went 4-5. What matters with time of possession are turnovers. The Wildcats had two turnovers in each game against Houston and ASU while their opponents had none.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon.
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