This week's edition of Why Our Opponent Sucks has it all - including an American History lesson you may have forgotten! So here is Why Our Opponent Sucks - the Arizona edition!
Arizona is basically the Ole Miss of the West Coast
That red and blue make you want vomit? There's a reason. The University of Arizona is basically everything we hate about Ole Miss. Just as Ole Miss lives on dumb rich kids from Atlanta and Dallas, Arizona is the safety school for rich California kids who can't get into the UC system and would not dare go to a Cal State school. In California upper middle class circles, "My kid is going to Arizona" is code for "Your kid is a partier who does not take school seriously and could not get into UC Santa Cruz, much less Berkley or UCLA." Check out the Arizona admission standards. They are Ayers-esque without the Ayers.
Arizona is a serial conference-killer
Hate the direction that college sports is taking? Blame schools like Arizona. When the Wildcats join the Big 12 next year, it will be their fourth conference in 61 years. Only TCU has been in more conferences and they were in three conferences in a three year period. The difference is that Arizona is a cancer that kills conferences. They left the Border Conference in 1962. The Border Conference dissolved in 1963. They spent 16 years in the WAC and left in 1978. The WAC reacted with a series of errors that made it cease operations eventually. Now they are leaving the Pac 12 and the Pac 12 is basically dead. So by the Arizona conference killer standard, the Big 12 has about 15 more years before it dies.
Arizona is just a bad football team.
The Wildcats are coming off a 5-7 season, which is an improvement from going 1-16 in the two prior seasons, but they aren't a good football team. Arizona has not had a winning record since 2017 (when they fired Rich Rod to hire Kevin Sumlin) Rich Rod took them to 10 wins and the Fiesta Bowl in 2014 but they fired him after a 5-7 season in 2017. If you think Arizona can win in Starkville, take comfort in the fact that Arizona has not won a Power 5 road game since 1994 and has only one win, a 1976 win over Auburn, over a member of the SEC.
Bonus History Lesson
Conference expansion? What about nation expansion? The Gadsden Purchase gave us the area in which Tucson sits, but do you know the history? Santa Anna was brought back from exile and Mexico was struggling. They needed money. They offered to sell us Baja California, and most of Northern Mexico including Monterrey for $50 million. James Gadsden arrogantly went to Mexico and said that we just needed land for a railroad from Vicksburg to the West Coast and we'd take the rest by military force. Santa Anna got pissed, but he couldn't do anything, so the entire purchase was reduced to this trash sliver of land for $15 million. Congress said hell no, we'd give Mexico $10 million and Santa Anna took it. The railroad never got built because the Northerners wanted to piss off the South. Seven years later, we were at war.
