Arizona returns to Pac-12 country to face Washington State

PULLMAN, Washington — When you turn on the Arizona football game on CBS this Saturday, no, you didn’t go back in time, but yes, there will be a Pac-12 logo on the field.

It’s the logo of a conference Arizona was tied to for 45 years, but the ever-changing landscape of collegiate athletics now has the Wildcats wearing Monster Energy patches on their jerseys as a member of the Big 12.

When the Arizona Wildcats meet up with the Washington State Cougars in Pullman, it will be the first game against a non-Big 12 school with Pac-12 connections. It’s the first game in a home-and-home series that will return to Tucson in 2027.

Washington State and Oregon State stayed — more like left behind — in the Pac-12, while the old “Conference of Champions” splintered in 2024, with Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah going to the Big 12, while USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon joined the Big Ten. Cal and Stanford — the Pac-12’s Bay Area representatives — joined the (checks notes) Atlantic Coast Conference.

WSU and Oregon State are the only two Pac-12 legacy schools in a conference that added teams from the Mountain West and brought in Gonzaga as a basketball-only school.

This year marks the first matchup between Washington State and Arizona as nonconference opponents since 1972 — the first in Pullman since 1971, when a Bob Weber-coached Arizona team beat WSU, 39-28.

When the Wildcats and Cougars were in the same conference, Arizona had a 21-13 record against Washington State in the Pac-10/12 era. The Wildcats are 28-19 all-time against Washington State since the first matchup in 1963.

Some of the memorable games between Arizona and WSU over the last several decades include a triple-overtime thriller in 2000, with linebacker Antonio Pierce grabbing a game-ending interception. Arizona also had a one-point loss to Washington State in 2004, a game that had a total of nine fumbles, and another overtime game in 1997.

The Wildcats have produced a number of memorable wins in Pullman, like the high-scoring game in 2014 or their more recent game in Pullman, a 44-6 drubbing, marking quarterback Noah Fifita’s first win as Arizona’s starting quarterback in 2023 — the UA’s last season as a Pac-12.

There have also been nightmarish experiences for Arizona in Pullman during the Rich Rodriguez and Kevin Sumlin era. Arizona was outscored 138-35 in two trips to Pullman between the 2016 and ‘18 seasons. In 2021, former head coach Jedd Fisch’s first season, Arizona lost to Washington State, 44-18, in extreme fog.

Arizona’s biannual trip to Pullman used to be the longest conference road trip for the Wildcats. Nowadays, Arizona is in a conference that stretches across four different time zones.

“Shoot, in a couple of weeks, we’re going to fly all the way across the country to West Virginia,” said Arizona defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales, who coached at ASU in the Pac-12.

“In the old Conference of Championships, the matchups, the rivalries, it was a great league,” Gonzales said. “Now it’s a different league. The Pac-12 is completely different than it was. The Big 12 is really good for Arizona.”

The biggest advantage to Arizona being in the Big 12 is the batch of players the football program is bringing in from Texas every recruiting class.

“It was harder to recruit kids out of Texas when you never played there,” Gonzales said. “It’s a great advantage for the University of Arizona and the school up north to be in the Big 12.

“But what a great league (the Pac-12) was. The opportunity to play (USC) and UCLA, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State and all those rivalries throughout the years. We’re worried about college football in congress right now, we’re not worried about rivalries. I would not be surprised if realignment were to happen one more time. … I have no idea what’s going on. I’m not sitting in any of those meetings — and I really don’t care. I just want to play football and coach the ones we have the opportunity to coach.”

Washington State is leaning into the Pac-10 nostalgia this weekend by honoring the 1992 Copper Bowl team led by star quarterback Drew Bledsoe. The Cougars beat future Pac-12 opponent Utah in the ‘92 Copper Bowl at Arizona Stadium in Tucson. Longtime WSU head coach Mike Price will be in attendance for the ceremony.

Arizona head coach Brent Brennan has experience in the Conference of Champions as a player and coach. Brennan played wide receiver under Terry Donahue at UCLA and coached at Washington, Arizona and Oregon State. He was a wide receivers coach for the latter and coached receivers like Biletnikoff Award winner Brandin Cooks and Markus Wheaton.

“For me, that was the conference that I grew up with,” Brennan said. “That was a conference I played in, I coached in it, so I have a lot of fond memories of that. I think the travel was easier and there weren’t any cross-country trips. The trip this weekend would’ve been the most challenging travel in the old Pac-12. That’s the world we’re living in. Everything is constant change and I think the teams that adapt to that the best and find ways to move forward with the current structure we’re in, are the ones that have the best chance to be successful.”

Arizona will be the only Power 4 school Washington State hosts this season, but “they’re used to playing Power 4 schools,” Gonzales said.

“They’ve been a Power 4 program forever, so this will be nothing to them,” Gonzales said. “They’ll be excited to play just as we are.”

First-year Washington State head coach Kirby Moore, who is the fifth WSU head coach — full-time or interim — since 2021, said the Cougars “didn’t need an alarm to get up on Sunday” to begin preparing for Arizona after their dominant win over Duquesne, the first victory of the season after dropping the first two games to Washington in the Apple Cup and Kansas State on the road.

Saturday is “a great opportunity for our guys and our fans,” Moore said.

Moore noted there’s no incentive to beat Arizona because the Wildcats are a former Pac-12 opponent and it’s the final nonconference game for both teams.

Said Moore: “It’s the most important game because it’s the next game.”

For Arizona, it could conceivably be the last time they take the field with a Pac-12 logo emblazoned on the 25-yard line.