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Rather than confess his football sins and admit he loathes Arizona State with all his being, UA star linebacker Spencer Larsen on Monday said that he's uncertain whom he dislikes more, the Sun Devils or the Oregon Ducks.

What's more, Larsen said that if he indeed abhors anyone (in a football sense) it would be his old high school rivals, the Gilbert Tigers.

"I still hate them to this day,'' he said.

Welcome to the UA-ASU football rivalry, 21st century.

On campus this week, Mike Thomas, the Pac-10's leading receiver, is slowly discovering that the UA-ASU football series transcends the first great rivalry of his career: DeSoto vs. Duncanville, a Texas prep showdown so big that it has been played at the Dallas Cowboys' stadium.

"People that know me have been saying, 'You'd better go whup 'em, yada, yada, yada,'' Thomas said. "They can't stand those Sun Devils up there.''

Although he didn't admit it, Thomas harbors as much or more disdain for the Duncanville Panthers than for the ASU Sun Devils.

"I'm still trying to work on it because I'm not from here,'' he said. "But I understand it.''

Does he hate them?

"Not really.''

Memo to Money Mike: You don't really understand it.

Nor does UA coach Mike Stoops detest the Sun Devils in a manner comforting to Wildcat fans. He said the most encompassing rivalry of his career has been Oklahoma-Texas.

Say it ain't so, Mike, or at least don't say it until February.

"You hope (ASU-UA) becomes a stronger and stronger rivalry,'' he said, indicating that in order to get that way there needs to be more at stake for the 5-6 Wildcats.

Customarily, this is not the way it has been at Arizona, dating to the inaugural Territorial Cup game of 1899. To his credit, however, Stoops understands how UA fans interpret ASU week.

"There's a lot of bitterness and hatred among the fans,'' he said. And there are cows in Texas.

This is a notable change from the compelling UA-ASU series of the 1980s, in which the great Sun Devil slayer, Larry Smith, spoke openly of his dislike for ASU.

Adjacent to the door of his McKale Center office, Smith had a painter list the following team goals:

1. Have fun.

2. Win the Rose Bowl.

3. Beat Arizona State.

And so his teams did. They rolled ASU in Smith's final five UA seasons, 1982-86, all in epic upsets, most of them via inconceivable late-game finishes that defied logic.

Smith's feisty teams knocked ASU from the Rose Bowl in 1982 and 1985, and marred the Sun Devils' '86 Rose Bowl team with a classic 34-17 victory forever remembered as the Chuck Cecil Game.

"You certainly don't want the team you're working against to reach a pinnacle like the Rose Bowl,'' Smith said after his 5-4-1 team overwhelmed the 9-1 Sun Devils in a 1982 game at Arizona Stadium.

Smith was so candid about his dislike for the Sun Devils that he permitted a student booster group to paint an enormous banner that read:

ASU ROSE BOWL BID

MAY IT REST IN PEACE

The students carried the banner to the field moments before the '82 kickoff. Smith and his team gathered in a large circle behind the banner and then, on cue, burst through the sign.

Oh, how we miss the good, old days. Today, a sign so potentially flammable as the '82 banner would never get past field security.

The old-school Wildcats don't trust the Sun Devils and never will.

In 1964, prepared to face an 8-1 Frank Kush team that was No. 10 nationally in offense, UA coach Jim LaRue was told that Sun Devil quarterback John Torok had an injured shoulder and was not expected to play.

"How much do you want to bet?'' LaRue replied.

Torok played every snap that week. LaRue had so prepared his defense for Torok that it intercepted a record six ASU passes and won 30-6. Not bad for a team that was 5-3-1 before kickoff.

Beating the feared Kush drew a then-record crowd of 30,847. Winning that '64 game so invigorated the community that two days after the game, UA athletic director Dick Clausen announced that Arizona Stadium would be expanded by 10,000 seats for the following season.

How times have changed: The Territorial Cup was not a sellout from 1999 to 2005. Seven years of empty seats. Why? Because neither team has been good enough, or good enough simultaneously.

The old feelings of animosity remain on a low simmer, but there are encouraging signs that the new-age Wildcats are coming around.

On Monday, UA senior cornerback Antoine Cason revealed "there is hatred all around campus'' and that, unimaginably, he dislikes ASU so much that he cheered for USC to beat the Sun Devils on Thanksgiving night.

That's sort of the lesser of two evils, no? But at least Cason's order of evil — 1. ASU, 2. USC — suggests his UA education has not failed.