Wednesday was the 20th anniversary of Chuck Cecil's 106-yard interception return that beat Rose Bowl champ Arizona State, a play of such Tucson legend that it challenges plausibility.
Cecil intercepted 20 other passes in his Arizona football career, including four in one afternoon against Stanford, or so it says in the record book.
Can you remember even one of those 20? No.
It's not like Cecil dazzled you with elusiveness, like Chris McAlister, or with explosiveness, like Darryll Lewis, two of Arizona's consensus All-America defensive backs.
Cecil returned those other 20 interceptions for a bare 135 yards, not even 7 yards per pick. He was one of those right-place-at-the-right-time guys. It's a good way to avoid saying "slow."
"Holy moly," he said Wednesday, chuckling at the memory. "Every year it's like that run back gets a little slower."
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Chuck Cecil is now 42. He is married, a father, the secondary coach for the Tennessee Titans. His play, that 1986 interception, stands alone as the most celebrated play in UA football history.
If the unforgettable '86 game — Arizona 34, ASU 17 — is not the most lionized game in UA history, it is no worse than No. 2 or No. 3.
It all goes back to Cecil.
"I've gotten a few calls this week," he said in his typically understated way. "Sometimes when you think back to that afternoon, to that game, it's almost surreal. Twenty years, really? That whole day was a blur."
Nov. 22, 1986, was a clear, warm day at Arizona Stadium. The No. 4 Sun Devils (9-0-1) had clinched the Pac-10 championship. They did not have to worry about losing their place in the Rose Bowl, as they had in painful 1982 and 1985 upset losses to 7-2 Arizona.
But, oh, did they want to end their humbling string of upset losses to the Wildcats.
"Our seniors are aware of the streak," said ASU coach John Cooper. "After a while, you feel the urgency to get out and stop the dang thing."
The morning of the game, UA coach Larry Smith was so impressed with the Sun Devils that he told his coaches, candidly, he feared being routed.
"After I looked at the game films," he said 24 hours later, "that was the best football team we played in our seven years here."
On the game's first series, at Arizona's 3, Cecil (who else?) forced a fumble. The Wildcats immediately drove 97 yards to score.
The noise created by a capacity crowd at Arizona Stadium was indescribable. In the fall of 1986, before Lute Olson had taken Arizona to its first Final Four, beating the Sun Devils in football was the year's leading sports event in Tucson.
Very visible on the wall inside Smith's McKale Center office was a list, in order, of the UA's three annual goals. They were:
● Beat ASU.
● Have fun.
● Win the Rose Bowl.
Cecil, who played at Helix High School in San Diego, perhaps the only walk-on ever to become a consensus All-American and a first-team academic All-American, enrolled at Arizona in the fall of 1982. At the time, ASU had won 15 of the last 17 games against the Wildcats, many of them blowouts.
"Larry had a way of making you believe the reason you were at Arizona was to beat ASU," Cecil says now. "I was from San Diego and had never been to Phoenix, never heard of ASU. I didn't know their school colors or anything. But even before we played them my first year, when I was redshirting, I hated them.
"I still hate them."
Early in the fourth quarter, trailing 21-10, ASU drove to Arizona's 5. Quarterback Jeff Van Raaphorst, who would pass for 437 yards, had changed the game's momentum.
He called a play that sent future NFL receiver Aaron Cox on a crossing pattern in the end zone, in front of Cecil.
"I had seen that play on film all week and had an idea they might try it," Cecil remembers. "When (Van Raaphorst) got flushed from the pocket, he threw across his body. I knew where Cox was going."
Linebacker Brent Wood tipped the pass just enough to change the rotation of the ball and into Cecil's hands.
"Had Brent been 5-11 instead of 5-10, the whole play would've been different," Cecil said. "It was almost destiny. That's the way I've always felt. All of those crazy wins over ASU. The way Larry approached those games — and you would have to be stupid to think we had better teams — we just felt, no matter what, it was our destiny to beat them."
A few years ago in Phoenix, Cecil cannot remember when or where, he bumped into Van Raaphorst. They talked about the '86 game, the interception, destiny, bad luck, UA-ASU, all of it.
On Saturday, Van Raaphorst will be at Arizona Stadium again, as part of the ASU radio network. Cecil will be in Nashville, Tenn., preparing for Sunday's game against the New York Giants.
"Sometimes, it's impossible in SEC territory to get a Pac-10 game on TV," Cecil said. "But I'll find a way to find out what's going on. I'll be there in spirit if nothing else."
