Arizona QB Noah Fifita now has his shot to raise his Heisman profile, a la Bear Bachmeier

Arizona’s best start in more than a decade carries a frustration eons in the making for the Wildcats and so many of their peers across the West.

Noah Fifita doesn’t receive a fraction of the attention he deserves.

Where is the ESPN love for the leader of the nation’s No. 22 team?

Why isn’t social media fawning over the fifth-year senior?

Why doesn’t Fifita receive a morsel of support in the rapidly narrowing Heisman Trophy race?

He is, after all, one of the most accomplished quarterbacks in the FBS, with 91 career touchdown passes. He leads the Big 12 in passer rating, is second in the country in completion percentage and is the reigning first-team all-conference quarterback.

Also, he possesses an increasingly rare backstory: Fifita has never transferred. He remained loyal to the Wildcats through five years, two head coaches and a slew of twists that would have prompted 99.9 percent of quarterbacks to leave town.

And yet, his profile remains so low that coach Brent Brennan has addressed the matter publicly, and repeatedly.

“I think the national narrative around Noah is slow and late to the game,” Brennan said earlier this week.

Well, Fifita has a chance to change the narrative Saturday when the Wildcats visit No. 13 Texas Tech in one of the marquee games of Week 9.

The stage is substantial: 12 p.m. Eastern on ESPN.

The opponent is perfect: The Red Raiders are not only ranked but polarizing — win or lose, their games resonate.

And the timing is ideal: The start of the stretch run, with Heisman Trophy voters trimming their candidate lists and on alert for which players rise to the occasion.

In fact, there’s a clear and obvious comparison for Fifita: BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier.

Like Fifita, Bachmeier played extremely well for a winning team in the first half of the season, but his candidacy was languishing with all the attention directed at superstar players in the SEC and Big Ten (and Miami).

Given a showcase opportunity, against Notre Dame in primetime, Bachmeier delivered four touchdowns and a victory, catapulting his name (and team) into the national conversation.

Fifita’s platform isn’t quite as lofty: The Red Raiders aren’t the Irish; and 12 p.m. ET isn’t primetime.

But it serves the same purpose as a vehicle for Fifita’s candidacy — a candidacy that spent half the season in familiar shadows.

The Heisman race simply is not structured in a manner that benefits players in the western third of the country.

How so? A brief history lesson:

In the past half century, 10 players from the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones have won the award. Six are from USC. The others are BYU quarterback Ty Detmer in 1990, Colorado running back Rashaan Salaam in 1994, Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota in 2014 and Colorado cornerback/receiver Travis Hunter in 2024.

Remove USC, the region’s one true blue-blood, and the remaining major college schools — there are dozens — have produced just four winners over the past 50 years.

And only two in the past three decades.

Mariota was a preseason favorite with name recognition from coast-to-coast before the season began; the other, Hunter, was a unicorn as a full-time player on offense and defense. Both the 2014 Ducks, because of their top-10 ranking, and the 2024 Buffaloes, because of their star power, had a barrage of games in premium TV windows.

Fifita received first-team all-conference honors last year but, like Arizona, was an afterthought when the 2026 season began. The Big 12 placed four teams in the AP preseason poll; the Wildcats were not one of them. The list of betting favorites for the Heisman Trophy went 15 players deep. Fifita wasn’t one of them.

As a result, his Heisman campaign began far off the pace in the same fashion as so many other elite players from the region. The curious case of Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey best illustrates the challenge.

During the 2015 season, McCaffrey broke one of the most hallowed records in the sport, Barry Sanders’ mark for all-purpose yards. But he finished second in the Heisman race to Alabama’s Derrick Henry in large part because of exposure, or lack thereof: 55 percent of McCaffrey’s record-breaking yardage total came in games that started at 10 p.m. or later on the East Coast.

Fifita has encountered much the same issue during his career generally and this season specifically.

The Wildcats did not play a marquee non-conference game in September that demanded a premier broadcast window on Fox or ABC. They have been on TNT or ESPN2 several times. Fifita’s best game statistically, against Northern Illinois, was at night.

We mentioned Bachmeier previously. Here’s some context: Fifita’s first seven games drew fewer TV viewers (approximately 7 million) than Bachmeier’s performance against Notre Dame (9 million).

One game outdrew seven — and not by a little.

That’s the power of the big stage.

The date with Texas Tech represents Fifita’s best chance to grab the spotlight and the narrative. To inject himself into the ESPN and Fox studio show conversations that help drive opinion. To introduce himself to Heisman voters in Florida and Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

After all, the vast majority of the 931 voters are outside the Far West bloc, which spans the Dakotas to California.

Yep, that massive swath of terrain is home to just 16.7 percent of the electorate.

The remaining 83.3 percent (roughly 775 voters) is jammed into states east of, or touching the Mississippi River, plus Colorado and New Mexico.

Given the general population, the breakdown isn’t unreasonable.

But it makes visibility challenging for candidates from the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones, especially those who do not have USC’s brand power behind them or don’t begin the season in the lead pack.

This opportunity is three-and-a-half seasons in the making.

If Fifita shines in Lubbock — and if the Wildcats win — the attention will come.

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