Arizona football, Noah Fifita could change narrative with a win over Texas Tech

A win would mean one step closer to the Big 12 Championship Game in Arlington, Texas, and ultimately a spot in the last version of the 12-team College Football Playoff, while a loss would essentially eliminate that team from title contention.

Both Texas Tech and Arizona are one-loss teams entering Saturday. Two-loss teams from the Big 12 make compelling cases to be in the College Football Playoff, but it doesn’t always work out that way; just ask BYU, last year’s Pop Tarts Bowl champion.

If the Arizona-Texas Tech game was played during, say, next year, when the CFP gets expanded to 24 teams with 19 at-large bids, the result on Saturday in Lubbock wouldn’t necessarily have the season-altering impact this year has — and the conference would likely have five teams in the CFP instead of just one.

But that’s next year. This year, the final month of the regular season will have significant ramifications.

Sixth-ranked Utah — a team Arizona hosts in two weeks on Nov. 14 — is currently unbeaten, while No. 8 BYU, Arizona, No. 13 Texas Tech and No. 24 Oklahoma State are all one-loss teams in the Big 12 schedule. Houston (6-2), which lost to Texas Tech earlier in the season, is on the outside looking in with two losses in Big 12 play.

Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire said the last five games is “going to come down to who can play the best each Saturday, and we’ve got to play much better, especially this week.”

“It’s the same thing as last year,” McGuire said. “It might have been different teams, but you had us with a loss, BYU undefeated. Now it’s us with a loss, Utah undefeated. But you had a bunch of (teams) that had one loss that were in the fight for getting to the conference championship game.”

Added McGuire: “We’ve turned this into a five-game season to where there’s not room for error.”

For Arizona, the Wildcats are still searching for their first win over a ranked opponent. The Wildcats lost to Big 12 title contender BYU in Provo to begin conference play. Losses to BYU and Texas Tech would steepen the path to the conference championship game for the Wildcats, because they wouldn’t own tiebreakers in head-to-head matchups against the Cougars and Red Raiders.

Arizona often preaches “nameless, faceless opponent,” but the Wildcats are aware of how significant Saturday is.

"I think faceless opponent is important, but obviously we know who this is,” said UA right guard Alexander Doost. “We're not going to pretend this is somebody we're going to just go through. We're doing what we do every week. There's no less intensity, no more. We're just doing our job like we usually do. … Taking it one day at a time, one play at a time, it makes it a lot easier." 

A victory for the Wildcats would be the highest-ranked road win for Arizona since the UA upset No. 10 Utah in 2024 — and it would amplify the national attention the Wildcats are garnering. Since Arizona has been on a five-game winning streak, the Wildcats have received more attention from national pundits and entered the Associated Press Top 25 Poll for the fourth consecutive season, which hadn’t happened since 1992-95.

Arizona head coach Brent Brennan has appeared on multiple national college football shows in the last week, and UA quarterback Noah Fifita has the third-most fan votes by a quarterback for the Heisman Trophy. Saturday morning, early enough for every Heisman voter to watch the game, could be a “Heisman moment” for the Arizona quarterback, who is 13th in college football in passing yards (2,064) and ninth in touchdowns (18).

“I think the national narrative around Noah is slow and late to the game. Just his consistent level of play has been outstanding. It speaks to who he is, it speaks to how he prepares, it speaks to the trust we have in him and his relationship with Coach Doege and what we’re doing schematically. He’s incredibly special.

“For him not being talked about as one of the absolute best quarterbacks, one of the best players in the country, I don’t understand that. He played really well a year ago, so there’s definitely momentum coming into this season for him. Then he makes the unselfish choice and chooses to stay and chooses the U of A and chooses his teammates and coaches and the city of Tucson.

“I keep saying he’s the best story in college football. Then he goes out and throws for 300 (yards) and completes 79% of his passes (against Iowa State). He’s special. It should be broadcasted on every station in the world about how awesome he is.”

Doege said Fifita “is the best quarterback in the country and I’m going to stand on that 10 toes down until the end of the season.”

“I expect him to play well (against Texas Tech),” Doege said. “I don’t want him to apply more pressure than he already does on himself. I want him to be Noah Fifita. It’s my job to make sure he’s ready to play and has the answers to play at a high level. I want everything that kid could get, because he’s earned it all. I want his name to be nationally recognized as much as possible. But the greatest thing about Noah Fifita is that he’s not worried about that. Noah Fifita is worried about beating Texas Tech and whatever it takes to beat them.”

Arizona could shift the narrative as a team and Fifita’s Heisman buzz, but they’ll have to beat a Texas Tech team that’s coming off an upset loss to Cincinnati. Doege said, “I expect Texas Tech to play at their best.”

Texas Tech — a program with the top budget ($35 million) in the Big 12, courtesy of billionaire oil businessman and prominent booster Cody Campbell — hasn’t lost in Lubbock since 2024. The Red Raiders are riding a 12-game home winning streak going into Saturday. A win over the Wildcats would match Texas Tech’s best home winning streak of 13 games, which was set in 1939-42.

“We’re going to get their best shot; it’s going to be an incredible environment; it’s going to be a hell of a football game,” Brennan said. “In any situation, you’d rather not lose the week before. In terms of how we’re looking at it, we know we’re going to be playing an excellent football team that’s very well-coached, very physical on both sides of the ball, in a very tough environment.

“This is a big-time challenge for our football team.”