Holiday Bowl matchup between Arizona, SMU features QBs who've remained true to their schools

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — In the era of the transfer portal and NIL, the Holiday Bowl between No. 21 Arizona and SMU on Friday night could easily be called the Loyalty Bowl.

The two redshirt junior quarterbacks, Noah Fifita of Arizona and Kevin Jennings of SMU, have chosen to remain at their schools and appear set to finish their careers where they started.

Coaches Brent Brennan of Arizona (9-3) and Rhett Lashlee of SMU (8-4) couldn't be more appreciative.

Brennan called Fifita “a really special young man,” as well as a great player.

“He's the first, first-team all-conference quarterback we’ve had at Arizona in 50 years, and his play speaks for itself,” Brennan said on Thursday. "He’s also incredibly loyal. I’m sure coach Lashlee is dealing with this, where the free world and college football have been chasing guys like this quarterback of ours, and those players have chosen to stay. They’re loyal. They love their university.

“Noah Fifita loves the University of Arizona. He loves Tucson. He’s heavily involved in the community, and he loves our program, our coaching staff and the teammates,” Brennan said. "I think that’s really special: A young man makes an unselfish decision, but one that’s fundamentally based on who he is as a person and on his character, which is unique in today’s game.”

Lashlee had similar praise for his quarterback and said Jennings is returning for his senior season.

“It’s three straight years that, in this new era of college football, he’s had plenty of opportunities to go somewhere else,” Lashlee said. "Honestly, he’s always been pretty steadfast that he wants to be a Mustang. Kevin is from Dallas. He grew up in Dallas. He won a state championship at South Oak High School in Dallas. He came to SMU, and much like what Coach Brennan was saying with Noah Fifita, he’s just a really loyal young man.

“Kevin sees the value of not only the degree that he’s already earned at SMU, but just the legacy that he’s able to build, staying in Dallas, being a hometown kid, winning championships in high school, winning championships now at SMU, taking us into the ACC, going to the playoffs, all those things,” Lashlee said.

Fifita will be back at Snapdragon Stadium three seasons after starting his college career as a backup with the Wildcats team that faced San Diego State in the first game at the Mission Valley stadium. It was 100 degrees at kickoff that day, when Arizona won 38-20.

“I remember it was hot,” he said. “It's a coincidence because we're from Tucson, Arizona, and that's probably the hottest game I've ever been a part of.”

He's from Huntington Beach and expects to have plenty of family members at the Holiday Bowl.

Fifita is Arizona's career leader with 70 touchdown passes. He has led the Wildcats to five straight victories.

A victory will give the Wildcats their second 10-win season in three years. It would also cap a nice rebound from last year's 4-8 finish in their first year in the Big 12.

“It’s obviously been a really special year for us," Brennan said. "It starts with the alignment we’ve had with our athletic administration, our president and the university. That flows all the way down to our coaching staff and our team. We have a great group of young men, a team that was really committed to staying together and coming back with so many of our players.”

SMU has lost five straight postseason games dating to 2017, including a 38-10 defeat to Penn State in last season's College Football Playoff. The Mustangs' last bowl win was in 2012, when they beat Fresno State 43-10 in the Hawaii Bowl.

Arizona is 1-1 in the Holiday Bowl, with a 23-20 win against Nebraska in 1998 and a 33-0 loss to the Cornhuskers in 2009.

SMU is back for the first time since 1980, when it lost one of the wildest games in college football history. Led by the “Pony Express” backfield of Eric Dickerson and Craig James, the Mustangs took a 45-25 lead over BYU late in the fourth quarter before Jim McMahon led a comeback capped by a 41-yard Hail Mary to Clay Brown as time expired for a 46-45 win.

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