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Arizona Wildcats vs California Golden Bears Football Preview

Now this is a fascinating matchup of teams that are at once so similar and yet so different.

The common thread uniting the California Golden Bears and the Arizona Wildcats is that they both avoid Pasadena on New Year's Day. Arizona hasn't been around the Pac-10 for a full century the way Cal has, but the Cats have never reached the Rose Bowl since joining the Pac-10 in 1978. Arizona came close to reaching the Rose Bowl last season, but in addition to a wrenching overtime loss against Oregon, the other game that helped push Zona out of the running for the Roses was contest at... you guessed it... Cal. The Golden Bears tipped the Cats, 24-16, in a crazy November contest that typified each of these teams' snake-bitten identities over the years.

Cal took an 18-16 lead on a field goal by kicker Giorgia Tavecchio with 4:46 left in regulation time, when all hell broke loose. Arizona's Travis Cobb took the ensuing kickoff and appeared to be on his way to the end zone before Tavecchio, who had every bit the body of a kicker, found a way to clip Cobb and stop the return man's progress at the Cal 38.

Cal needed another zany and logic-defying play, however, because Arizona was still on the doorstep of field-goal range in a two-point contest. Arizona drove the ball down to the Cal 25 and was in position to kick a go-ahead field goal with less than two minutes to go. Then, on third-and-three, U of A quarterback Nick Foles had his pass deflected by Cal's superb defensive lineman, Tyson Alualu. The ball went straight into Foles' hands, and since the line of scrimmage was the 25, Foles would have been well-advised to drop the ball. Instead, naturally, he caught the pigskin. Foles then compounded his mistake by throwing a second forward pass on the play, a clear violation of the rules that any Division-I quarterback should be aware of.

Arizona should have had a manageable field goal of 42 yards, given that the previous line of scrimmage was the 25. However, Arizona was pushed back to the 39 with the 5-yard penalty from the spot of the foul, accompanied by the loss of down - that is indeed the penalty for an illegal forward pass. With no chance at what would have been a 56-yard field goal, the Wildcats went for the first down, and when Foles threw an incomplete pass on fourth down, Cal got the ball and then scored on a 61-yard touchdown bolt by Shane Vereen. Interestingly enough, Cal missed the extra point to keep Arizona within one score of tying (including a 2-point conversion), but Foles couldn't muster anything in the final minutes, and Cal held on despite a terrible effort from its own quarterback, Kevin Riley, who threw two interceptions against Arizona.

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This year, as these teams reunite on the gridiron, Arizona is fresh off a major conquest against Iowa, while Cal is reeling after a humiliating 52-31 setback at Nevada. It's clear that these programs are acquiring different trajectories. Yet, in the same breath, the history of Pac-10 failure at both Arizona and Cal (the Golden Bears from Berkeley have not made the Rose Bowl since 1958, which makes Arizona's 32-year drought seem tame by comparison) means that momentum is short-lived when these schools clash. Neither the Cats nor the Bears have been able to stand prosperity for very long. If you think Zona has this game in the bag, you know little about Pac-10 football, and nothing about the sad histories of two teams that want to get things right on Saturday night in Tucson.

Cal and Arizona are traveling along opposite paths at the moment, but no Wildcat fan should feel overly safe this week - the Bad News Bears could transform into a good team, and ruin the U of A's Rose Bowl plans... as was the case a year ago.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer