I hope you’ve got your health insurance up to date.

The Arizona football season is only half finished.

Three Pac-10 games, three games packed with stress to the final gun. Forget the injured players; are the fans going to survive the season?

Not only did the Cats stay close enough to get your hopes up, not only did they take a late lead on an improbable run, not only did they let Stanford fly down the field for what would have been a game-losing touchdown, but on top of all that the officials took what seemed like an hour to figure out how much time went off the clock on an incomplete pass to set up 3rd-and-10. As the seconds went by the blood pressure went up. Are they trying to torture us?

I know we should be happy with a win any way it comes, but I’m up for a nice blowout victory any time now.

It’s not going to happen against UCLA. Don’t you try and talk yourself into it. No. I don’t want to hear it. The Bruins just posted their highest point total in six weeks and Norm Chow is going to be salivating as he watches game film this week.

I fully expect another close game on Saturday. I am already preparing for another ending that will trigger a prescription spike in Southern Arizona.

Don’t fall into the what-if trap. We The People are funny that way. Fan math says you earned every win you got and you should have won all the close losses. Remember how we turned 3-8 into 5-6 after the Wisconsin and WSU losses in 2004? What did that get us? 3-8 in 2005.

This is our team. We have a quarterback who makes all things seem possible, and a defense that makes the other team feel the same way.

How bad is it when your QB throws for 400 yards and he isn’t even the game’s top passer? As soon as David Hasselhoff stepped up to the mic we should have known we were going to end up needing CPR.

There was a lot of strategy déjà vu at the end of this one. Stanford found itself in the same position we were in last week: up nine on the road facing fourth down in the red zone. Just like Stoops, Harbaugh elected to push the lead to 12 instead of going for the kill, only Stanford’s kicker missed.

That had to factor into Harbaugh’s thinking when confronted with the 4th-and-2 from the UA 8 and the lead down to two. Interestingly enough, Stanford was now playing the role of Arizona in last year’s game. Kick the field goal – which is what Stoops did last year – and you avoid losing by a field goal but you leave open the possibility of getting beat by a touchdown – which…you know.

Because of that I can understand why Harbaugh went for it. A two-possession game with five minutes left probably ices the win. He was playing to win the game right there. I get that.

But calling a passing play? Arizona thanks you, Jim. I know Gerhart was hurt, but you had been just killing us with that seven-lineman formation in short-yardage situations. Your #2 running back couldn’t run through one of those massive holes?

Add in declining to put the ball on the 40 after the kickoff out of bounds (dusting off a rule I didn’t even know still existed), and taking a delay-of-game after a timeout with less than a minute to play, and…I’m just glad it happened to someone else for a change.

Those of you watching the game on TV, were you ready for it? After Nwoko’s run made it 38-36 you knew it was coming, and the Versus stat team did not disappoint. “Arizona is 2-16 in its last 18 games decided by three points or less.”

The funny part is, by scoring a touchdown instead of a field goal this win doesn’t even count against that stat. For the record, Mike Stoops is now 3-1 in games decided by four to six points. He’s undefeated in games decided by exactly five points. I have no idea what that means.

Three points, five points, thirty-five points, a win is a win for this team. We’re right where we wanted to be at the halfway mark: 4-2 record, 3-0 at home and…ranked in the BCS standings?

Wow. That came out of nowhere. From barely getting votes in the human polls to #22 in the official standings after the computer polls are factored in. Thank you, Iowa and Central Michigan! It doesn’t help gain one yard against UCLA but, hey, at least it makes it easier to find Arizona on the scoreboard all week.

I hope your doctor’s phone number is just as easy to find…

The Wildcats play again this week.

The TWIT-Pac is back with another round of unsolicited sports-watching advice!

Even though last week’s crossroads game didn’t go well for the Wildcats, the good news is there are no games pitting a league leader against a bowl contender so the Dreamers (“8-1 still gets us to the Rose Bowl!”) and the Realists (“7-5 is the absolute ceiling!”) can root for the same teams this week.

Cal (3-2 / 0-2) at UCLA (3-2 / 0-2) – 12:30 PM (all times Arizona/Pacific), ABC
The Bears have been waiting two weeks to take another stab at scoring their first touchdown of the conference season.

Who do we root for?
UCLA. The identical records make this one appear to be a coin flip but Cal still has a bigger upside and Arizona gets UCLA at home. (Let the record show this is my third straight week backing the Bruins and it hasn’t worked out too well so far.)

USC (4-1 / 2-1) at Notre Dame (4-1) – 12:30 PM, NBC
The Irish have lost seven straight to USC. That’s probably why they added Washington State to the schedule.

Who do we root for?
USC. I haven’t been shy about my desire to see the Trojans fall this year but I only want Pac-10 teams to wield the sword. Besides, you don’t want to have to root for Notre Dame twice in the same year, do you?

Stanford (4-2 / 3-1) at ARIZONA (3-2 / 1-1) – 4:30 PM, Versus
Stanford has beaten the Cats by one point in each of the last two seasons. We do not want to play another close game with them.

Who do we root for?
Your Arizona Wildcats. Last week’s loss was in the budget. This week needs to start a string of home wins or we could go broke.

Washington (3-3 / 2-1) at ASU (3-2 / 1-1) – 7:15 PM, FSN
The Huskies recovered well from the heartbreaking loss at Notre Dame. Can they bounce forward after the heart-stopping win against Arizona?

Who do we want to win?
UW. But it’s not as obvious as you might think. If we get our wish and ASU ends up close to the bottom of the standings, there’s going to come a point when we want them to knock off a bowl contender for us. With WSU behind them and USC ahead of them ASU has a much tougher remaining schedule than U-Dub. It wouldn’t be a disaster if the Huskies ended up with a fourth loss here, but it’s never bad when ASU loses.

With all four games on TV and none of the games overlapping the Arizona contest you out-of-towers can sit back and soak in the Pac-10 action all day.

I expect all you in-of-towners to be at Arizona Stadium however. We’ve got a home field to defend.

Pause. Deep breath. Moving on…

After games like this you have to force yourself to look at the big picture. At 3-2 the Cats are exactly where most of us thought they’d be when we looked at the schedule before the season. We’re still on pace for winning season and that second straight bowl game.

So we’re not going to be 8-0 and playing USC for first place in 2009. I can live with that.

Think back to the Iowa game. If you knew then we’d have a quarterback who completed 72% of his passes for 737 yards in securing a road split to open the Pac-10, you’d be ecstatic, right?

Nick Foles leads the Pac-10 in pass efficiency. #1. Yeah, he’s only started two games. I know his toughest games are ahead of him. But when’s the last time a UA QB was on top of any sort of positive ranking? Nothing builds football hope like quarterback potential.

Speaking of which, can you guess the guy right behind Foles in terms of pass efficiency? Stanford’s Andrew Luck. Big game this weekend.

The old common-opponent paradox comes into play with this one. Is it UA > OSU > Stanford, or Stanford > UW > UA?

I’ll answer it for you: Stanford is better than Washington. The Cardinal rank ahead of the Huskies (and Beavers) in scoring defense, pass defense, total defense and sacks. Mr. Foles isn’t going to be able to just sit back there and throw darts like he did in his first two starts.

So why do we still have a good chance to win? I looked it up and they do in fact let you play football games at home.

Finally. After 35 long days we have another game at Arizona Stadium. How is this game not Homecoming? When you’ve been gone for five weeks the least they can do is throw you a parade.

The crowd is going to have a lot of pent up energy and the players will feed off it. That should help bring focus after a week of distracting memories. Where Washington was last week after the Notre Dame loss, Arizona is this week.

The silver lining with all these last-second losses is this team knows how to bounce back. If there’s a plus to being inconsistent, that’s it. Bad losses don’t automatically mean a season-ending slide. The New Mexico, Stanford and Oregon State losses last year were all followed up with a win. In that sense Mike Stoops is the Anti-Tedford.

But that doesn’t mean he and his troops don’t drive us crazy sometimes, which means it’s time for another installment of…

Things Nobody Else Does

- Call timeout before the first snap of the second half
It’s not like you’re going to need that timeout when your quarterback gets sacked forcing 3rd-and-8 with less than a minute to go on the brink of field goal range in a three-point game.

- Get called for holding on an extra point
Our field goals are plenty scary. We don’t need to also turn PATs into adventures.

- Lose your starting defensive tackle to a door injury
Is that what it said on the injury report? RB Nic Grigsby (shoulder) – Questionable, RB Keola Antolin (ankle) – Doubtful, DT Earl Mitchell (door) – ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Pause. Deep breath. Moving on.

The best way to get over a brutal defeat is with a solid win, and a victory over this Stanford team would be just that. In Tucson, we get to tailgate again. We get to see Nick Foles start in person for the first time. And we get to cheer on the Arizona Wildcats again.

I think we’re going to be just fine.

Welcome to Arizona Football.

If you’re new in town and you just started taking an interest in how the local team is doing, you are now a member of the club. If you’re reading this as a fan of another team, you just got a glimpse into our dark reality.

This is life as an Arizona Wildcat football fan.

Fumbling while running out the clock. A hurricane. An unsportsmanlike conduct call on a wide receiver while running a two-minute drill. Done, done, and done.

A 50-yard fourth-quarter touchdown run in a 7-6 game. A bowl game where you only give up 75 total yards. And that’s just off the top of my scarred head.

That’s why we were terrified at the end of this most recent Washington game. This is why we weren’t overly shocked when the game slipped away. The only thing out of the ordinary was the degree of difficulty.

That is how you go 73 years without an outright conference championship.

You know the Versus guys have their updated graphic all queued up for this Saturday:

ARIZ IS NOW 2-16 IN LAST 18 GAMES DECIDED BY 3 PTS OR LESS.
YOU ARE ABOUT TO CRY RIGHT NOW.

That is now six consecutive losses in three-points-or-less games in the past two-plus years. UA gridiron heartbreak dates back way before Mike Stoops but his teams are turning it into an art form.

Arizona absolutely killed the Huskies between the 20s. We own the Green Zone. It’s that other-colored zone that gives us trouble.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, however, when you look at the personnel losses. Take out Grigsby, Antolin and GRONK! and you’re missing 33 touchdowns from last year, and not in the same way Mike Thomas’ 27 career TDs are missing. These are three guys who were supposed to score just as many points this year. Take the two running backs and add Juron Criner’s injury and you were missing the guys responsible for seven of this year’s 12 offensive touchdowns. You can call it an excuse but if the question is, “Why were we so bad in the Red Zone?” there’s your answer.

Nic Grigsby would have scored on that stretch play run from the UW 2. He either outruns the defense to the pylon or makes one hard cut like he did against ASU last year. Keola Antolin would’ve scored on the 4th-and-inches play. He reads the cracks in the line and gets low enough to squeeze through.

This isn’t to say Greg Nwoko is going a bad job. His punishing touchdown run in the first quarter was a thing of beauty. It’s just unrealistic to expect a freshman to replace all the experience (and TDs) of the two guys ahead of him on the depth chart.

Even with the Red Zone struggles it’s really hard to blame the offense for this one. Thirty-three points should be enough. It’s not like we only scored 16 and asked the defense to hold back the dam. You can’t get mad at the offense for failing in the Red Zone when you’re giving up touchdowns before the other team even gets in the Red Zone.

Of course, the defense defenders will point to the injuries on that side of the ball, as well as the kickoff team giving up field position all night. I have no idea what the solution is there because not even the underhanded free throws are working.

You certainly can’t pin this loss on Nick Foles. On top of the gaudy passing stats, the kicked INT was actually a really nice on-the-fly adjustment by both Foles and Dean. The Huskies jumped the route so Dela ran forward past the defender and was open. Nick read it as well and it would have been a small gain at worst and a potential big gain with a quick move outside. Foles just didn’t get enough on the throw and the rest is UA football history.

No, there is zero reason to be concerned about the quarterback position. In fact, we were three minutes away from full-on Foles Mania hitting campus. The second-most completions in a game in school history. The ninth-most yards in a game. Throwing through defenders like they were holograms. A 2-0 road record. You wouldn’t have been able to keep the Nick Follicles wigs on the shelves.

Now we regroup and lick our reopened wounds. The season is still young. Suffering may be a part of the Arizona Football experience but quitting isn’t.

So come on out to Arizona Stadium this weekend. Tune in from across the country. Whatever you do, don’t take your eyes off the guys in the blue helmets.

You might just witness something you’ve never seen before.

Here it comes. A fork in the road. A crossroads. Any other highway-based metaphor. And I’m not just talking about the Arizona football team.

This week YOU have a decision to make. You have to figure out – right now – how good you think the 2009 Wildcats are. Are we a middle-of-the-Pac team for the fifth consecutive year? Or does this squad have a chance at something more? Your weekend’s rooting interests depend on it.

There are three league games on Saturday besides our own and two of them pit a conference leader against a bowl bubble team. The bottom line is this: If you think by the end of the year the Cats will be fighting for a low-end bowl you want the top teams to beat the middle teams now. But if you think there’s a chance the UA can make a run at the big prizes you want teams ahead of us in the standings to go down.

Are we decent-good or good-great? With the Cats/Dawgs playing late you don’t have the luxury of seeing how that game goes first. It’s time to take a stand, people.

Me? I’m partaking of the optimism. This may end up being our last day as a contender so I’m going to enjoy it. Let’s topple some giants!

Oregon (4-1 / 2-0) at UCLA (3-1 / 0-1) – 12:30 PM (all times Arizona/Pacific), ABC
The Ducks have won their last two games by a combined score of 94-9. I think they’re over the Boise State thing.

Who do we root for?
UCLA. This is Oregon’s first road game since their opening week loss. Let’s hope they get sloppy before their bye week.

ASU (2-2 / 0-1) at WSU (1-4 / 0-3) – 2 PM
The battle for 9th place begins here!

Who do we root for?
WSU. This may be the Cougars’ best chance at a conference win since the Devils’ offense isn’t exactly on-fire. They’re downright flame-retardant.

Stanford (4-1 / 3-0) at OSU (3-2 / 1-1) – 4 PM, FSN
The Trees are a third of the way to the Rose Bowl. They can’t keep this up, can they?

Who do we root for?
OSU. It’s time for Stanford to come back to earth a bit. As an added bonus it would make them an iffy road team as they prepare to head to Tucson next week.

ARIZONA (3-1 / 1-0) at Washington (2-3 / 1-1) – 7 PM, FSNNW / FSNAZ
The Huskies try to bounce back from that controversial loss to Notre Dame against a Wildcat team looking to keep its quarterback undefeated.

Who do we root for?
Your Arizona Wildcats. The season certainly doesn’t end with a loss but the dreams would get scaled back a bit.

Let’s go ahead and keep dreaming.