Arizona Daily Wildcat - Oct. 19

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Sights and sounds

Relive Saturday’s game at dailywildcat.com. Check out a slideshow and football post-game video.

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Arizona Daily Wildcat

Only 61 days until finals are over! monday, october , 

tucson, arizona

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Wildcats ranked No. 22 in BCS poll Big sport on campus: Football gains on hoops?

COMMENTARY By Bryan Roy

T

sports columnist

he Arizona football program, a once-embarrassing Pacific 10 Conference punching bag, is on the cusp of eclipsing the Arizona basketball program, a once-elite Pac-10 bully still hungover from its mid-2000s reputation and campus popularity. The football team’s win against Stanford on Saturday wasn’t pretty, but it did send a clear statement to the Zona Zoo: It’s not basketball season just yet. Let the numbers talk — football is 4-2 overall, but most significantly, ranked No. 22 in the first BCS standings of the season. Basketball held its Media Day last Wednesday, but its only star player, Nic Wise, was a no-show due to academic commitments. Football, led by breakout quarterback of the year Nick Foles, could bring a 6-2 record and top-20 ranking into the California showdown on Nov. 14. Basketball’s depth chart, after Wise, looks more like a scatter plot of newcomers.

Alan Walsh/Arizona Daily Wildcat

Linebacker Sterling Lewis shows the ball to the crowd after recovering a fumble during Arizona’s 43-38 victory over the Stanford Cardinal Saturday at Arizona Stadium.

The Arizona football team’s victory over the Stanford Cardinal on Saturday proved not only important in helping the Wildcats make their first appearance in the Bowl Championship Series top-25 rankings but also showed their resolve SEE PAGE 8 FOR GAME COVERAGE after losing a heartbreaker to the Washington Huskies last week.

COMMENTARY, page 5

Arizona 18 at Club hosts Garba festivities Solar Decathlon th

By Karina G. Salazar ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT

By Will Ferguson ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT The UA finished 18th out of 20 teams in the 2009 Solar Decathlon hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. For three weeks in October, 20 of the world’s leading solar research universities and institutes presented energy-efficient, exclusively solar-powered homes designed and built by students and faculty. The Arizona Solar Energy-Efficient Dwelling was constructed in part by faculty, staff and students from the colleges of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the Department of

Materials Science and Engineering. The house features a clear plastic water wall to trap heat during the evening and deflect it during the day, as well as dual-sided solar panels that improve energy efficiency by up to 30 percent. The team is currently in the process of dismantling the project for the trip home. The houses were judged based on a series of 10 contests, the criteria of which included energy efficiency, marketability and architectural design. Team Germany took first place at the competition with a total score of 908.297 out of 1000 points. Team Illinois finished second with a score of 897.300. Arizona finished with a final score of 610.339.

Photo courtesy of Swati Patel

An array of brightly-colored swirling saris filled the gym in the Ina A. Gittings building Saturday night as the UA India Club hosted its annual Garba celebration. The Hindu cultural-religious celebration filled the gym with more than 150 students, parents and local Indian community members from 8 p.m. until after midnight for a night of traditional food, dancing and music. “Garba is a traditional event celebrated for nine days in October to worship three different goddesses” said Pratik Patel, a finance junior and president of India Club. “The celebration worships the goddesses of wealth, purity and well-being for three nights each.”

In celebration of the traditional Indian event Garba, community and India Club members gathered to dance and pray Saturday in the Ina E. Gittings building.

CULTURE, page 5

Degree in video gaming requires more than play Johnson County Community College is one of many colleges offering degrees in video gaming. Here, Dallas Crossland, left, and Drew Misemer work together in an animation class at JCCC on Oct. 6 in Overland Park, Kan. Jim Barcus/ Kansas City Star/ MCT

By Mara Rose Williams MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Menacing, metallic and mega-gun brandishing, the cyber super-soldier looms over Richard Fleming’s desk. Not exactly stereotypical for a professor’s office at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kan.? Well, as the “Gears of War”crowd might say:“Eat boot! Suck pavement! Get back into your hole!” This professor under the “Halo 3” figure teaches video game development. So lock and load, zappers of Nazi zombies or the locust horde. All those hours wearing out your thumbs in front of “Halo” or “Gears” actually could mean a college degree and fast career path. Before you drop your joystick, remember a degree in video game design is math and science laden. Or it could involve serious art skills. This year, 254 of the nation’s colleges and universities in 37 states have such programs, up 27 percent over the year before. At first, computer information science program leaders resisted bringing in video game courses, recalled Jeff Huff, assistant professor of graphics at Missouri State at West Plains.

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“They didn’t see them as worthy,” Huff said. “It was real easy to dismiss it by saying, ‘They are video games, how important could it be?’” According to the Entertainment Software Association, which monitors the game industry, video game design is the fastest-growing industry in this country. “A generation that has grown up playing video games is entering college,” said Rich Taylor a representative for the Entertainment Software Association. “Schools are responding to that.” Besides a favorite pastime, video games are developed for use in military training, education, Hollywood and for virtual training in a variety of fields, including medicine and mechanics. “In the last 12 years, software sales have quadrupled,”Taylor said, taking video game sales with it. Last year, games and game consoles reached $22 billion in sales. At a time when students are graduating into a shrinking job market, this industry is flourishing, Taylor said. More than 80,000 people are employed by the video game industry, said Taylor.“It is

: @DailyWildcat

GAMING, page 3


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