Chris McAlister was a unanimous All-American in 1998

Arizona’s Fearsome Foursome of defense — Tedy Bruschi, Rob Waldrop, Chuck Cecil and Ricky Hunley — are now in the College Football Hall of Fame.

Bruschi will be officially inducted in December after being selected by the National Football Foundation on Tuesday.

Former coaches Warren Woodson, Darrell Mudra and Jim Young are also in the Hall of Fame.

Is this Arizona’s limit? Four players and three coaches? Where is the “Cactus Comet” Art Luppino? What about Chris McAlister? Dennis Northcutt?

And shouldn’t Larry Smith and Dick Tomey get consideration?

Woodson was 26-22-2 in only five years in Tucson from 1951-56. He won the necessary 60 percent of his games because of stints at Arkansas State Teachers University (40-8-3), Hardin-Simmons (57-23-6), New Mexico State (63-36-3) and Trinity (16-5).

Mudra was 200-81-4 in his career but he was 15-27-1 at Arizona and Florida State, the only major college programs he coached. And he lasted only four years total at those institutions. He stockpiled victories at places like Adams State, North Dakota State, Western Illinois, Eastern Illinois and Northern Iowa.

Tomey had a career record of 185-145-7, a winning percentage of .546 that falls below the National Football Foundation’s required 60 percent.

Tomey, however, is widely respected among his peers and former players. During his tenure at Arizona, he coached five future NFL first-round draft choices, 20 All-Americans, and 43 Pac-10 first team players. His best teams were in the mid-1990s, highlighted by the “Desert Swarm” defense of which Bruschi and Waldrop helped form into one of the best units in college football history.

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The last 50 days took me back to some of the days I miss and some I wish I could experience via a time machine.

Who wouldn’t want to observe the 1914 game against Occidental in Los Angeles when the Arizona Varsity became the Arizona Wildcats? What made Bill Henry of the Los Angeles Times write that famous line: “The Arizona men showed the fight of wildcats”?

What about being there in the hospital room to hear John Byrd “Button” Salmon tell coach J.F. “Pop” McKale, “Tell them … tell the team to bear down”?

I was alive, barely two months old, when Arizona upset Ohio State and Woody Hayes in the 1967 season opener. Who knows? I may have listened to it. I have to ask my mom to jog her memory and let me know if my dad and brothers happened to listen to the game on radio and I was in the crib nearby.

Many of these top 50 games in Arizona football history took place before the advent of cable and satellite TV and the ESPN phenomenon. Some of them I remember listening to on the radio because a live telecast was not available.

John Byrd “Button” Salmon

Those games include “The Catch” game in 1975 in which ASU’s John Jefferson — did he or didn’t he? — was ruled to have caught a touchdown pass that helped prevent Arizona from winning the WAC and playing Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl, and the UA’s victory over ASU in 1985 in which Max Zendejas kicked a 57-yard field goal in Tempe that contributed to the Wildcats preventing the Sun Devils from playing in the Rose Bowl yet again.

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In the 50 days leading up to Arizona’s season-opener against Toledo, on Sept. 1 at Arizona Stadium, TucsonCitizen.com and its affiliate WildAboutAZCats.net will rank the Top 50 games in the history of the football program. The ranking is at No. 2 as the kickoff to the Wildcats’ season — and the start of the Rich Rodriguez era — is only two days away.

SCORE: No. 12 Arizona Wildcats 16, No. 1 Washington Huskies 3

DATE: November 7, 1992

SITE: Arizona Stadium, 58,510 in attendance

WHY IT MADE THE LIST: The definitive voice of college football broadcasts — Keith Jackson — punctuated the ABC-TV telecast of Arizona’s dominating 1992 win over No. 1 Washington this way:

“And now you know why they play the games …”

But was the one-sided victory really an upset?

“I don’t think it was an upset,” Arizona coach Dick Tomey said after the game. “We expected to win.”

Another translation to Jackson’s comment: Washington had to play Arizona to realize how suffocating the Desert Swarm defense — a phenomenon in college football at the time — can be to an opponent’s offense. Considering Arizona’s four-game winning streak entering the game after a near-upset of No. 1 Miami on the road, and the way the Wildcats shut down the Huskies, was anybody surprised the UA won?

Washington was ranked No. 1 with an incredible 22-game winning streak, but anybody who followed college football closely that season knew Arizona belonged on the same field. The Desert Swarm was No. 1 in the nation against the run and No. 4 overall.

“I’ve never been more confident going into a game,” Tomey said.

This statement coming from a coach whose team less than two months earlier tied an Oregon State club that finished 1-9-1. Washington beat its first eight opponents in 1992 by an average margin of 20.1 points. The Huskies annihilated the Wildcats 54-0 the previous season in Seattle. Still, the Wildcats believed they were the better team and who could argue?

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