Appreciating the Territorial Cup: What we’re thankful for at Arizona Sports in 2024

We should be thankful for rivalries.

This year’s Territorial Cup is up there in terms of most significant. For a second, let’s appreciate the rivalry for its uniqueness and without considering the stakes of a single football game.

Born and raised Arizonans can feel why it’s special. Especially in Phoenix, the fanbase is not defined by city or county lines.

I grew up 10 minutes from ASU’s campus. My parents both went to Arizona. But it was my uncle, Tommy, who probably gets the most credit for dictating where I went to school. We lost him this year, and this Thanksgiving I’ll be thinking of him.

He was Tucson to its core. He spent 51 years as a high school football official and assisted the Wildcats as an official during practices.

Tommy would gift University of Arizona shirts, rally towels — whatever — to my brother and me.

What happens when you’re a kindergartener or 1st-grader nonchalantly wearing Wildcat gear around your neighbors, teachers and classmates who were Sun Devil fans? They’d give you crap!  Even if they were gentle teases, you eventually get annoyed.

And as a malleable, developing human being, you learned to push back against those comments. You start to wear the Arizona gear with more purpose. Eventually, I picked a side in the most natural, authentic way: without a choice.

So I went to Tucson for school. I flipped my biology major to a journalism major, covered the Wildcats, moved back home, covered the Sun Devils (hopefully fairly) by getting rid of that fan filter, yada yada.

My story isn’t unique in this time and place. I’d bet that so many people in this state have similar stories. But it’s comparable to only a few rivalries across the country. Rivalries this deep can determine where we go to school, what we study and what jobs we get.

Crazy.

Anyway, this Thanksgiving, appreciate the Territorial Cup. And those people who inadvertently got you invested in this massively emotional deal.

Are we … a football state now?

There is energy behind Jonathan Gannon of the Cardinals (6-5) and Kenny Dillingham of the Sun Devils (9-2). There is purpose and a connection with the players that their predecessors, for different reasons, did not bring.

It shows up functionally on the football field in the form of competence. A low bar to be thankful for, to be sure, but that theme is important.

Are the Sun Devils the most talented team in the Big 12? I doubt it.

Even compare it to the 4-7 Wildcats, who have potentially three first-round NFL Draft picks, and you could argue ASU is not first in the state.

As for the Cardinals, I keep going back to preseason position group rankings from PFF and ESPN. Aside from tight end, safety and maybe quarterback, the roster talent didn’t look like it was in the top half of the league. In some cases, it was in the bottom five.

Still, this is a winning football team because its coaching staff has a plan. The Cardinals, with a pretty young coaching staff, is developing lower draft picks and knowing how to utilize underrated free-agent additions. They know how to fit the pieces.

The Cardinals and Sun Devils hit on picking coaches. Let’s enjoy watching them operate under the brighter lights this coming month.

The Suns have a Big Three still (and maybe they’ll be fighting for a title)

We’ve determined that the Suns need the Big Three to have a chance at competing this year. Surprising stuff, I know.

When they have been on the court together, the results look more promising than last season.

By general metrics, the Suns have played average ball, but they’ve piled up wins with a handful of clutch performances from Kevin Durant and friends. It’s progress compared to last year, when we without exaggeration wished our eyeballs were pulled out of our skulls for too many fourth quarters because the quality of basketball was so poor.

Mat Ishbia and the front office didn’t panic too much. It didn’t get too, too knee-jerky after last season went so poorly and it became easy to dismiss the Big Three project as a failure. Frank Vogel probably lost the locker room and was out, and the front office needed this past offseason to flip more switches to make this into a relatively deep team around its stars.

So here we are in a prove-it year. The basketball product looks better. Players are playing free. Wins are happening even though there’s still a learning curve under Mike Budenholzer.

Maybe the Suns don’t win it all or hit a bad matchup early in the postseason. But as it stands, they’ve got a shot to do some things, and that’s all you can ask for.

And if you don’t enjoy Durant doing the things he’s doing at 36 years old, I don’t know what to tell ya, bud.

The college hoops scene is interesting!

The filters you can view ASU versus Arizona in their shared move to the Big 12 are fascinatingly different.

Arizona no longer gets to plow through mid-tier, under-funded basketball programs. The Wildcats get to find out what life is like in a grittier, slower and more physical conference, where flaws will be exposed before we get to the first 2-10 seed matchup in the NCAA Tournament that UA fans naturally get nervous about. The early returns against power programs aren’t great so far.

For Arizona State, an apparent injection of NIL funding with a reshaped athletic department gives Bobby Hurley a chance. That’s not to say I think ASU has a shot of winning the Big 12. The Big 12 is by far a better hoops than football conference, and I don’t think the Sun Devils can do in basketball what they did in football. But ASU’s young squad has a shot to hang. It’s progress.

That’s without mentioning the inclusion of Grand Canyon, which is coming off a fun NCAA Tournament run and has one of the most fun players in the nation, Tyon Grant-Foster.

Follow @kzimmermanaz