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AG's Wildcat Report - Dispatches on the Wildcats, from Anthony Gimino

Wildcats ready to shed the blue helmets for Holiday Bowl

by on Dec. 21, 2009, under Sports

The rumor going around is that Arizona is going to wear white helmets, not blue, for its Holiday Bowl matchup against Nebraska on Dec. 30.

True?

UA senior defensive lineman Donald Horton was talking with reporters after Monday’s practice, when KVOA-TV’s Ryan Recker slid in a question about what Horton knew about possible uniform changes.

“What are you trying to do, man?” Horton said with a laugh, reacting very much like someone who did not want to let the cat out of the bag. Horton then somewhat answered by saying he knew “nothing about the uniforms.”

OK, the helmets. What have you heard?

“All kinds of stuff. Red helmets, white helmets, all kinds of stuff,” Horton said.

He laughed again.

“What are you trying to do, man?”

The rumor does has some legs. Wendell Neal, the associate athletic director for equipment operations, joked with a trio of reporters late in the practice that he was up all night painting helmets. (The UA’s helmets, even the blue ones and the would-be white ones, are painted.)

Despite everyone being sworn to secrecy, you can bet Arizona is going to break out the white helmets.

Arizona has experimented with its uniform combinations in recent seasons, including red pants and all-red uniforms last season. The Wildcats have worn blue helmets since Mike Stoops arrived for the 2004 season. Before that, Arizona wore some version of a white helmet dating to 1981.

The Wildcats have worn red helmets before, the last time being in 1980.

The Wildcats are the visiting team for the Holiday Bowl, so they will be wearing white jerseys, with blue numbers and red trim. And apparently red socks. You can see pictures at Neal’s equipment blog.

Arizona could wear red pants, blue pants or white pants. White on white on white?

We’ll see.

Ready to go
The Wildcats will have a walk-through kind of practice Tuesday and then leave for San Diego on Wednesday. The team is scheduled to attend the Poinsettia Bowl, between Cal and Utah, on Wednesday night.

“We’re excited to leave, and I thought we had a great five days (of practice) here.” Stoops said.

“I think our players really worked really hard and we’re in great shape physically and mentally. We’ll give them a couple of days to rest up. We’ve gone after it pretty good here at the end of finals.”

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Patrick Cash

    Who cares what color helmets the Wildcats wear?
    They are not Notre Dame where there is a tremendous tradition of wearing one color versus another color?
    Arizona is a basketball school.

  • Brian

    Have fun decorating boys!

  • Dotbo

    Arizona will be beaten by Nebraska, who will also be wearing white helmets.

    • paul

      stfu bitch

  • http://goazcats.com Kenny

    So you took the e-mail I sent you yesterday morning & ran w/ it, huh Gimino?

  • TUC_Husker

    Does the color of a helmet matter, no? what does matter is that your QB better have on a flak jacket. I have a feeling he will be spending a great deal of time on the ground thanks to our all world Defensive lineman, Suh. Oh FYI, Mr Suh has won the following awards: Bronko Nagurski Trophy, Lombardi Trophy, Chuck Bednarik Award, The Outland Trophy, Finished 4th in the Hiesman, and today was awarded the AP player of the year. The funny thing is focusing on Suh opens the right side up for our Leading Tackler Jared Crick, 4 others are 1st string all big-12 defenders. Have fun….we held OU to 3 pts, and Texas to 13 pts. The wildcats are not better than either of those two teams. As a Tusconian I have been waiting for payback for 98, to shut up my co-workers. That being said, nice win over USC, and you should have beat Oregon. Then again we beat Texas, then the big-12 gave time back to Texas so they could go to the Championship game. It was all about money, the refs had $4Mil reason to ensure a Texas victory, on that note Roll Tide…….

  • Wilburman

    To the poster above: Maybe leave Tucson. This is Wildcat country. What are you even doing here? Isn’t there some corn you need to be growing back in Nebraska?
    Oh and FYI: As big a wet dream you want to have about Suh and your moral victory of a loss to Texas…..your offense is still garbage. Your fan base needs to come back down to earth. Just because Texas played like crap against your team doesn’t mean you’re one of the big boys again. See you in San Diego.

  • TUC_Husker

    Wilbur, you sound like an idiot, Corn is mostly grown in Iowa, we are a cattle state.  What am I doing here, well I am current the IT manager for a major entity in tucson. Apparently the UofA could not produce any decent IT management canidates as I was recruited down to Tucson. I find it funny to see how angry U of A of people tend to get. You cannot even fill a stadium here, we have been sold out since 1962.  As for our offense I am sure you will be shocked to see that we are far better than you may have heard. We are not a Pac-10 pansy, the big-12 has far tougher defenses, I was at the UA/Stanford game, not overly impressed. Oh yes there are over 600 Husker alumni living here in Tucson. How many national championships do the Wildcats have? we have 5, we also have 3 Heisman winners.  Oh yeah, according to the NCAA, putting the time back on the clock as occured in the Big -12 Championship, was in fact not allowed per NCAA rules, then again who cares about rules. Oh yes, your Right Tackle might tend to disagree with your assesment of Suh. you apparently only saw 1 game we played. I will be at the game.

  • vegas

    STUPID when you are playing a team that also wears white helmets . . . and is the reason the NY Jets and Buffalo Bills switched to colored helmets in the 1980′s, as at the time all the AFC East teams (Jets Bills Pats Dolphins Colts) wore white helme

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  • mike b.

    Hey, P. Cash, you just copy and paste your comment all over the place?? You’re an idiot… I care more about the white helmets than your stupid comments.

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