From vandalism to kidnapping: 10 pranks from the UA-ASU rivalry

It was a football conspiracy for the ages.

ASU pirated three top prospects from the UA’s campus six weeks before the 1937 opening game against, yep, ASU.

On a late August night in 1937, ASU student manager Tom Lillico devised a plan to get former Glendale High School all-state football players Walt Ruth, Wayne Pitts and Rex Hopper out of their UA dormitories and onto the ASU roster.

Lillico drove to Tucson and returned overnight with Pitts, Ruth and Hopper. 

Read the full story here. 

Vandals from Tempe vandalized UA sidewalks, windows and buildings after the UA opposed allowing the college up north to change its name from Arizona State College at Tempe to Arizona State University.

From the story at that time: "Lettering measuring from one to three feet and saying 'ASU-200. Yes.' was printed on sidewalks, windows and buildings. Principal target was the Student Union building where workers were kept busy Thursday trying to take off the paint."

Three University of Arizona students were apprehended by an off-duty sheriff's deputy who happened to see a missing 1,500-pound bell that had been reported stolen five weeks earlier from the ASU campus in the back of a horse trailer.

The students said they had planned to ring the huge bell during halftime activities at the traditional UA-ASU football game in Tucson.

From the story published at the time: "University police had expressed concern earlier that if the bell were smuggled into the stadium and rung it might cause a riot between the rival student bodies." Dep. Les Godare said it was a matter of luck that he stopped the students, "It was a precisioned-timed operation involving walkie-talkie radios, lookouts and a code that provided for the sighting of law officers," Godare said. The students were "pretty disgusted that their plans had failed only a few blocks from the university."

Four ASU students were cited after the "A" on Sentinel Peak was painted yellow. When a police helicopter swooped over the mountain the officers spotted not only the repainted "A" but also seven men and a car. "ASU No. 1" was also scrawled on the road that winds to the top. Three men escaped but four were apprehended with yellow paint on their hands and shoes.

An anonymous band of Wildcat faithfuls slipped into Tempe and applied red and blue paint to the large "A" overlooking Sun Devil Stadium. UA students also hung an anti-ASU banner from the third floor of an ASU parking garage, chalked sidewalks and soaped windows with pro-UA epithets and put blue bubble bath in the fountain on the mall. "In terms of the pranks, we kind of dominated the week," boasted the UA student body president.

Tucson police spotted ASU students, who had several gallons of gold paint, as they climbed "A" Mountain after they 'went up the wrong hill the first time.'

No arrests were made and the ASU students were escorted out of the city by police.

An unknown group of vandals managed to splash some maroon and gold paint on the white-washed "A" shortly after midnight in November, 1990. The vandals left behind some rollers and a couple of buckets of paint.

Meanwhile in Tempe, after the "A" over Arizona State was vandalized, about 11 paint-splattered Wildcats were caught red-and-blue handed at a shopping mall.

A 12-foot-tall bronze statue on the University of Arizona campus depicting four bobcats — a male, a female and two kittens — and benches near the sculpture were covered with yellow spray paint and the letters “ASU” in late November, 2013.

The vandalism came just days before the rivalry football game between the UA and Arizona State University.

The artwork, called “The Arizona Wildcat Family,” which sits south of the Administration Building, is dedicated to former UA President Peter Likins and his wife, Pat.

A power-washer and a chemical solution were used to remove the graffiti from the statue, and no permanent damage was done, said Chris Kopach, the then-assistant vice president of facilities management at the UA.

The "A'' on "A'' Mountain in Tempe — the home of Arizona State University — was painted red by Wildcats fans in November 2013 a few weeks before the big rivalry game. 

In early November 2014, homecoming fever got the best of some UA fans who painted Tempe's "A" Mountain red and blue. 

Students at the University of Arizona were fooled by some ASU students into supporting fake legislation that would return the Tucson school to Mexico's possession.

Four ASU students drove down to UA's campus and posed as petitioners.

The group told UA students they were garnering signatures for "Proposition 200" that would return the university to Mexico as it supposedly was built on stolen land.

The petition signing was picked up by the UA's student newspaper, the Daily Wildcat.

The paper's editorial leaders wrote Wednesday that they were embarrassed by the bogus story and hoped a Wildcats' win in Saturday's game "will settle the score."

Read the Arizona Daily Wildcat story here.