As someone who still rebels at the OU/Texas game being media-branded as "The Red River Shootout"*, please allow me this personal question.....Who the heck in the 7th level of Sportswritng Hades has promoted the name "Zona" to stand for Arizona (see Illustrated, Sports, as well as PN,ES)? Granted that the stereotype of Arizona as full of Wisconsin and Iowa retirees in their Buicks and Winnebagos is not without validity (I can still remember my first church supper in Tucson: row after row of crunchy tuna-fish casseroles and not a decent plate of fried chicken to be seen), and granted that it's hard to imagine said Pasty-Americans as victims of ethnic slurs, it remains the case that "Zonies" was the California slur for Arizona visitors. They hated our cars, but boy did they like our money. But now that California has cemented it's position as "Cyprus on the Pacific," and Like Lucy and the Football, California sports media plays Charlie Brown to yearly fantasies that the next UCLA basketball dynasty is just around the corner, perhaps it is UCLA's descent into self-parody that leaves the West Coast sports media no choice but to resort to hurling insults to a team that they have considered an interloper ever since, oh say about 1984 (catch the ceiling banners). Never forget: the opposite of a Zonie is a Californicator.
* Amazingly, to my knowledge no hack sports "journalist"has yet despoiled the simplistic beauty and symmetry of "Florida vs. Florida State."
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