Along the Way: Wildcats and Sun Devils — natural gridiron enemies

Arizona versus Arizona State is a football rivalry like no other.

Texas-Oklahoma is about who recruits the best players from Texas.

Stanford-California is about who buys the chardonnay after the Big Game.

Harvard and Yale have simply been playing forever. In their first contest 125 years ago, no points were allowed for a touchdown, merely the opportunity to score a one-point field goal.

Most rivalries are played in an atmosphere of cordial fury. Fans are on opposing sides of a few small resentments. They yell “boola boola” and shake plastic pompons at each other.

But when the Wildcats face the Sun Devils it is Little Big Horn with pads. Each considers the other a blot on creation.

It is all-out hatred.

Tucson does not like Phoenix and its collection of bedroom communities which call themselves “the Valley of the Sun.”

Down here, Up There is referred to as “the Valley of the Smog.”

Tempe considers Tucson a part of Mexico and claims the city’s greatest hero is Pancho Villa. (Come to think of it, there is a fine statue of Pancho in the central part of the city. Oh, well).

The bitterness and hatred between Arizona and Arizona State is as solid as Aunt Emma’s fruitcake.

Saturday’s 82nd Wildcat-ASU game is not as much a matter of which team is bowl-bound as which one gets bowled over.

They’d both rather win this game than go to a bowl.

But Arizona (6-5), after a 10-year absence from post-season play, has qualified for one of the bowls under contract to the Pacific-10 Conference.

Meanwhile, Arizona State (5-6), must defeat the hated Wildcats in order to qualify for the post-season.

The Devils want to make it four in a row over Arizona. The Cats haven’t won since a 34-27 decision in Tucson in 2004, Mike Stoops’ first year as the UA head coach.

The first time these schools ever met was on Nov. 30, 1899 at Tucson’s Carrillo Gardens Field. Arizona State, then known as Territorial Normal School of Arizona, had been playing football for a couple of years, but the sport was brand new to UA.

The Bulldogs, as ASU was known back then, defeated Arizona, which had no nickname yet, by a score of 11-2.

Then Arizona learned how to play football and dominated the series up to and including a 67-0 rout of ASU in 1946.

The Bulldogs had had it. So much so that they changed their name to Sun Devils and began to even things out against their arch-enemy.

Overall, Arizona leads the series 44-36-1. In games played at Tempe, the Sun Devils hold an 18-16-1 advantage. In Tucson, the Wildcats have a 28-17 margin.

Arizona won nine in a row from ASU from 1902 through 1930, and 11 in a row from 1932 through 1948. The Wildcats went nine years without losing, from 1982 through 1990. They won five straight under the late Coach Larry Smith (1982-85). Then, after a tie game in his first year, they won three straight under Dick Tomey.

The Devils won nine straight under Frank Kush, 1965-73, and 13 of 14 from 1965 through 1978.

All across the country, college yells create — and are created by — a lot of excitement and amazement on the football field.

But no where is the atmosphere as intense, so impassioned and extreme as it is at the Arizona-Arizona State game.

Each of the other rivalry games is unique.

This one is bloody unbelievable.

Corky Simpson writes a weekly commentary for the Green Valley News.