ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Ted Miller

There are many ways to lose a football game. Sometimes a team goes rear end-over-tea kettle during the early going. Other times a team blows it at the end.

Neither is terribly pleasant. Perhaps Stanford and Arizona coaches, players and fans can debate the relative demerits of each in Tucson on Saturday.

A week ago, both Stanford and Arizona looked poised to enter the national rankings and climb atop the Pac-10. Cardinal fans were imagining their first bowl game since 2001 and a Heisman Trophy campaign for running back Toby Gerhart. Wildcats fans were agog over new starting quarterback Nick Foles and a potential 4-1 start despite three consecutive tough road games.

Things didn't go according to plan, though.

Stanford opted not to wait for its disappointment. It entered the halftime locker room at Oregon State trailing 31-7.

"We got our butts beat," said Cardinal coach Jim Harbaugh, cutting to the chase when asked what he saw while watching the game film of the 38-28 loss.

And then there's Arizona. Take a moment, Wildcats fans, and express your feelings about the 33-26 defeat at Washington, in which your team out-gained the Huskies 461 yards to 256 yet still managed to yield a 12-point lead in the final four-plus minutes. Any thoughts on the officiating?

Our condolences. Now hush. We must move on to the rest of the story, which as Arizona coach Mike Stoops will tell you is about looking forward to Stanford.

"You've got to let it go. You can't hold onto it or it will devastate you," Stoops said.

Added Harbaugh, "The good news is it only counts as one game."

There's more good news. In the preseason, there were questions about the declining quality of Pac-10 quarterbacks. These two teams have answers, now and into the future.

Foles, a sophomore, ranks No. 1 in the Pac-10 in pass efficiency and had been mostly outstanding -- six TD passes in just 106 attempts -- until he threw his first two interceptions of the season late in the Washington game, though the nature of one of those picks was fairly controversial, you may have heard.

At Stanford, redshirt freshman Andrew Luck ranks second in pass efficiency. Just like Foles, he's got six touchdown passes and two interceptions, and would have produced a seventh if receiver Chris Owusu didn't drop a sure long scoring throw on the first play from scrimmage at Oregon State.

Not to pick at those scabs or anything.

It's not easy being a young, first-year starter, but these two have thrived from the get-go and thus far have even outplayed the conference's most celebrated young QB, USC's true freshman Matt Barkley.

"Talent has a lot to do with it -- physical maturity, mental maturity," Harbaugh said. "Being able to focus and play loose at the same time, where it's not overwhelming to be out there."

Stoops said he's not surprised but Foles' early success, though that sets up the question of why fellow sophomore Matt Scott initially won the job and started the first three games (the answer, by the way, is Scott consistently outplayed Foles during most of preseason practices).

"He's one of those classroom junkies," Stoops said of Foles. "He loves the science behind everything and wants to know everything. He can get better and better because he puts a lot of time into his trade, that's for sure."

Despite the hostile environment -- Arizona Stadium can get pretty raucous -- Luck has an advantage over Foles on Saturday: Gerhart, who likely is looking to be more of a factor than he was when the Cardinal fell hopelessly behind at Oregon State.

The Wildcats defense is beat up. Defensive tackle Earl Mitchell (concussion, laceration to his head from a swinging door) and ends Brooks Reed (ankle) and D'Aundre Reed (hand) are questionable.

As is the Wildcats once-potent running game: Nic Grigsby (shoulder) and Keola Antolin (ankle) area questionable. Both are the quick, scatback types that give the Cardinal trouble -- see the Rodgers brothers last week. No. 3 back Greg Nwoko is a 220-pound straight-ahead runner that plays into the strength of a physical defense accustomed to practicing against Gerhart.

But throw the nuances aside. Both these teams have high aspirations. Not to draw a line in the sand or anything, but the loser might find it hard to reach those goals with a loss.

"We're not going to put any more pressure on ourselves than we already have," Foles said. "We all know what we have to do."

Perhaps Harbaugh said it best: "Both teams need a win. Both teams are very capable."