The USC-Arizona football series hasn’t had many memorable encounters in the Pac-12 era. One was last year, with the Trojans winning a multi-overtime thriller. However, USC did not have a season which magnified the significance of that victory. It was merely an interesting footnote in a failed year. USC and Arizona simply haven’t had many high-stakes collisions, the kinds of games which linger in the public memory. If you were to choose a significant USC-Arizona Pac-12 game, one choice rises above the others.
We wrote about the 1986 USC-Arizona game, which was ugly and poorly played, but which was won by the Trojans and therefore created a chain reaction which influenced the next several years for both schools:
“(Larry) Smith’s 9-3 Arizona team in 1986 might have finished 11-1 had it handled USC. As it was, the Wildcats fell short of their goal. They finished the season in the top 15 of the polls, a great achievement for the program relative to its barren history, but lacked the prestigious bowl game to show for it.
“When USC fired coach Ted Tollner after the 1986 season, guess who was willing to spring from Tucson — and was offered the USC job? Yep, Larry Smith, who promptly made three straight Rose Bowls at USC before his tenure quickly lost steam in the early 1990s.
“If Arizona had beaten USC in 1986, Tollner still would have been fired … but the Wildcats might have taken a very different turn. This is the USC-Arizona game which still contains an element of fascination many years later. USC’s victory didn’t lead to any riches in 1986 … but it did in 1987, 1988, and 1989.”
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