Pac-12 Tuesday: Cats vs. Dawgs and Desert Swarm Origins

Week 5 of this historic Pac-12 campaign brings a matchup of seminal significance for your humble author’s football fandom.

I have mentioned in this newsletter before that the 1993 college football season is the first I followed closely. That fall was a perfect combination of factors:

• Sports become a more central focus of my childhood interests.

• The Program debuted in theaters that September — and while I was much too young to actually watch the hard-R film that combined the scandals of ‘80s Oklahoma with Jimmy Johnson-era Miami in a Florida State uniform, the trailers provided almost daily fodder for conversation among my school friends.

  I didn’t actually see The Program until high school, and by that point I had already seen both Varsity Blues and Any Given Sunday. Most of the salaciousness that intrigued my elementary-school pals and I about The Program wasn’t quite as impactful as it must have been in 1993.

• That same fall, Rudy debuted. As I got older and learned more of the Rudy story, I soured on the film a bit. But going to an old theater in Globe, Arizona, for a matinee showing with the high school basketball team my dad coached just a few weeks before Christmas is a cherished memory.

Oh, yeah: The actual football itself was fantastic. ‘93 is a remarkable season with an unforgettable national championship chase. I supported Florida State for the simple fact Charlie Ward struck me as a veritable superhero.

Following the Seminoles’ run to the Elite Eight the previous March, I committed to watching the standout guard play quarterback as often as I could — and I’m glad I did. Ward is still today among my all-time favorite players, doing things no other quarterback would replicate on the field until Michael Vick at Virginia Tech more than a half-decade later.

I got a kick out of Florida State wearing green hats for an epic showdown with Notre Dame, and I was disappointed when the Seminoles lost a classic — but I was elated when Boston College stunned the Fighting Irish the next week.

Florida State went on to win the national championship in another classic, beating Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, 18-16. The nightcap in Miami put a cap on a New Year’s Day 1994 that cemented my college football fandom.

Earlier that Jan. 1, 1994, I can still see my parents excitedly shouted at our living room TV as Chuck Levy went 68 yards for a touchdown that sent Arizona to halftime with a 16-0 lead over Miami.

Levy’s touchdown provided the iconic moment of a 29-0 drubbing, the first shutout in Fiesta Bowl history — and a record that endured until Clemson’s pasting of Ohio State in the 2016 season’s College Football Playoff semifinal.

My parents’ excited shouts starkly contrasted a year earlier when Steve McLaughlin — already one of the most celebrated figures in Arizona Wildcats football history for his sure foot — just missed a 51-yard attempt that would have ended The U’s winning streak at the Orange Bowl three full years before the Whammy in Miami.

That day, the reaction as I remember it was one of more quiet disappointment. It stands out as a handful of college football memories I have predating 1993, a short list that includes:

• Desmond Howard hitting the Heisman pose in 1991.

• Alabama beating Miami for the 1992 season’s national title, a championship claimed under Gene Stallings. I didn’t know a heck of a lot about anything at that time, especially football. But I knew from listening to my dad that Stallings got a bum rap from those clueless Bidwills running the NFL down in Tempe, and Alabama’s championship was vindication for the prematurely ousted Cardinals coach.

• Arizona beating No. 1-ranked Washington in 1992.

The Huskies were coming off winning a split national championship in 1991 shared with Miami. Washington dominated all comers on the way to a split crown with Miami in what remains the quintessential example of why a Plus-One is the ideal college football postseason format.

The ‘92 Dawgs headed into the final month of the season still undefeated, boasting a collection of Top 25 wins that included a 41-7 blowout of No. 15 Stanford the week prior to UW visiting Tucson¹.

Now, Washington wasn’t coming into Arizona on Nov. 7, 1992, an overconfident favorite looking past a scrappy little underdog. UA checked in at No. 12 in the AP Poll, making the Wildcats the Huskies’ highest-ranked opponent since they manhandled Nebraska in September.

What’s more, Washington was down quarterback Billy Joe Hobert.

Now, Hobert was already sharing snaps with Mark Brunell in the 1992 season. Hobert’s suspension nevertheless warrants a mention.

But it’s also worth noting that just about anyone could have played quarterback that day, and it wouldn’t have mattered. The Dawgfather himself, Don James, told reporters as much after the game.

The Arizona defense put on a masterclass that day, completely shutting down the Huskies.

Now, the Desert Swarm identity that shaped Arizona football throughout Dick Tomey’s tenure in the 1990s was arguably born with the loss at Miami. After all, the Wildcats ground an offense featuring the eventual Heisman Trophy recipient, Geno Torretta, to a single score.

But the 16-3 romp of a Washington team that featured Napoleon Kaufman at running back arguably ranks as the earliest of three signature performances in the Desert Swarm — the others being the 1994 Fiesta Bowl and the 1998 Holiday Bowl to cap the best season in Arizona history still to this day.

Credit to the always great Anthony Gimino, who shared the starting lineups from that day via Twitter²:

Desert Swarm remains so revered, current Wildcats coach Jedd Fisch made bringing figures from the era back around the program a priority upon taking over in 2021. The current Arizona team often wears uniforms patterned after those teams.

When Washington visits Tucson in Week 5, coach Kaelen DeBoer brings what may very well be the best Huskies team since the end of the Don James era. Even though Arizona’s defense this season is vastly improved, I don’t anticipate a Desert Swarm-level showing against Michael Penix Jr. and the potent UW attack.

Still, the shared history between two programs like Arizona and Washington speaks to the depth of this conference’s legacy, and reflects what we’re losing with realignment.

1. Fun fact, Washington’s 1992 schedule also included a non-conference matchup with Pacific in the Tigers’ first season under coach Chuck Shelton. Shelton oversaw the program until 1995, the final year in UoP football history — a history dating back to 1895 and including such noteworthy names as Amos Alonzo Stagg, Jon Gruden, Hue Jackson and Pete Carroll among its ranks.

2. It’s Twitter. It will always be Twitter. Twitter is a great name that accurately describes the platform. X is a stupid name and I’ll never call Twitter “X.”