Kelly Presnell / arizona daily star

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Ballots for the Jim Thorpe Award were due early Thursday, long before Antoine Cason tugged jersey No. 5 over his shoulder pads and prepared to play his final game at Arizona Stadium.

It wouldn't matter if Cason scored on a kick and a pick (which he did) or that millions of Americans peered at their TV screens and said "I didn't know Arizona had a football team.''

Unlike the No. 2 Oregon Ducks, it was much too late for Arizona to play for God, country and for No. 1.

Unlike Oregon quarterback Dennis Dixon, whose dazzling campaign for the Heisman Trophy had become college football's most trendy story, Cason's modest attempt to win the Thorpe Award probably didn't reach voters east of Tombstone.

But in a very irregular season in which traditional winners (i.e., Notre Dame) and chronic losers (i.e., Kansas) have changed identities with unprecedented swiftness, it was Oregon that got the Boot Hill treatment Thursday.

Arizona became Oregon and the Ducks became Wildcats. The UA won 34-24, an outcome so unexpected that unfaithful Arizona fans left more than 6,000 seats vacant.

Dixon's first-quarter knee injury surely eliminated him from Heisman consideration and the Ducks from the BCS title scenario. Cason's touchdowns on punt and interception returns won't improve his chances to win the Thorpe Award, nor will they send Arizona anywhere other than to a Dec. 1 game at Arizona State.

But the national perception of UA football, and its once beat-up reputation, has undergone change. If only the Wildcats could get a mulligan and play BYU, New Mexico and Stanford again.

"This really is just one game in the grand scheme of things," said UA coach Mike Stoops. "We have been in too many close games this year and we need to keep working on being a great team overall."

For the Ducks, it was like one of those movie scenes when a guy gets knocked silly and lies in a stupor. The picture goes blurry. Everyone moves in slow-motion. Muffled sounds of a siren are audible.

"Playing for the national championship was fun while it lasted,'' Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. "But my primary goal is always the conference title, and now we need to focus on that.''

Right, Mike. And there's an iceberg off the coast of Miami.

Once Dixon slowly walked to his club's locker room 11 minutes before halftime, his team trailing 24-11, the Ducks were done. Oh, sure, there were some fourth-quarter dramatics but did you really think backup QB Brady Leaf, if given the opportunity, would drive the Ducks 70 yards for a score, forcing overtime?

In the Pac-10, the Ducks have most of the money and lead the league in the cool-dudes quotient, but they don't have an endless supply of stud quarterbacks. Once you lose Dixon, who was electrifying in the first quarter, accounting for 96 yards of offense in what seemed like 96 seconds, it's like taking Robert Redford out of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and subbing in Don Knotts.

It wasn't a "make'' game for the Ducks but it was indeed a "break'' game. Their season is irretrievably broken. At what point in the next decade or quarter-century can they truly expect to go to Game 10 of the season with both Heisman Trophy and national championship hopes so realistic?

Probably never.

Nor was it a make or break game for Arizona. The Wildcats have been broken so often that the scars are visible. They created such a deficit for themselves in September and October they still don't have a winning record. Isn't that weird? Arizona hasn't lost since Oct. 20. It only seems like forever.

And it's not a "make'' victory for Arizona because it must be coupled with an upset over the Sun Devils to punch a ticket to a bowl game somewhere.

If nothing else, Mike Stoops has established his coaching identity as a serial giant-killer. One year it is No. 18 ASU in Tempe. The next it is No. 7 UCLA. Another it is No. 8 Cal. And now No. 2 Oregon.

At his weekly press briefing Monday, Stoops either had some inside information to the wobbly condition of Dixon's left knee, or he was doing some wishful thinking.

"I don't care if it's a mild sprain or not,'' Stoops said, a reference to a hit Dixon took late in a victory over Arizona State. "We'll know right away if he's effected or not.''

Without Dixon, Arizona not only had a chance, it made the most of it.

When Arizona whacked No. 1 Washington on the same turf in November 1992, it capped an incredible five-game winning streak in which the Wildcats knocked off three Top 25 teams and saved coach Dick Tomey's job. It remains the seminal victory in UA football history.

After that game, Washington linebacker Jamal Fountaine said he believed Arizona should be voted No. 1.

"To me,'' he said, "they're No. 1 now.''

That wasn't the case Thursday. But the Wildcats weren't fodder for the Ducks and they weren't a late-season snack for someone on the way to the Heisman Trophy presentation.

You've got to start somewhere and, finally, after 45 games, Mike Stoops and the Wildcats look to be on the road to somewhere with a happy ending.