Ask any of the players on the 1993-94 University of Arizona football team, and they will tell you that the build-up to the 1994 Fiesta Bowl actually started a full 15 months prior. Before the Wildcats and the Miami Hurricanes met at Sun Devil Stadium on January 1, 1994, the two teams squared off across the country in Miami in September 1992.
 
Expectations for the Wildcats were low that day as they entered the Orange Bowl, where Miami, the defending national champions, was 27.5 point favorites over Arizona and riding a 46-game home winning streak.
 
Undaunted, the Wildcats didn't buy the hype and if Steve McLaughlin's field goal attempt was inches to its left as time expired, Arizona would have left with a landmark victory.
 
Nevertheless, the Hurricanes survived, 8-7. Miami may have won the game, but something of much greater consequence was born that day: Arizona's Desert Swarm defense.
 
"We held Miami to eight points and we lost 8-7. That's where we became the Desert Swarm," said Brandon Sanders, starting safety on the 1993 Arizona team. "There were some instances where we showed we could do it, but that game really showed us what we can be and what we can stand on. The standard was set."
 
The Desert Swarm became the hallmark for Arizona's 10-win season – the Wildcats' first in program history – in 1993. Headlined by future NFL players such as Tedy Bruschi, Rob Waldrop, Tony Bouie, Brant Boyer and Sanders, Arizona's defense only allowed 13.4 points per game and barely 30 rushing yards per game.
 
Arizona brought its dominant defense north to Tempe for its rematch with Miami and notched the first shutout in Fiesta Bowl history with a 29-0 victory.
 
"(The game at Miami in 1992) was a real big game as a precursor to the Fiesta Bowl," said Waldrop, a unanimous All-American and winner of the Outland, Nagurski and Bednarik Trophies in 1993. "We decimated them defensively; shut them down entirely. It also generated this level of frustration that we came so close to beating them and ended up losing, so there was unfinished business. We had an opportunity at the Fiesta Bowl to make that right, which we all did."



The Wildcats set the tone early with Dan White capping Arizona's eight-play, 75-yard drive on a 13-yard strike to Troy Dickey on the Fiesta Bowl's opening possession. With a lead in hand, the Desert Swarm took its turn at the Hurricanes.
 
A holding penalty on Miami's initial play set the Hurricanes back at 1st-and-20 before a pair of Wildcat sacks pushed the Hurricanes further back to their 6-yard line where they punted on 4th-and-41. In fact, in Miami's first five possessions there were three 3-and-outs and the first two of three interceptions by Arizona's defense.
 
With Arizona leading 9-0 towards the end of the first half, Chuck Levy provided the biggest offensive highlight of the day with a 68-yard rushing touchdown, the second-longest run from scrimmage in Fiesta Bowl history. Breaking a tackle at the line-of-scrimmage, Levy outraced two Hurricanes defenders to the end zone to push the Wildcats' lead to 16-0 at halftime.
 
"I think they came in and underestimated us," Levy said. "You got Ray Lewis, you got The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) on your team. You got a bunch of guys who are going to be first round picks at every level of the defense from the secondary to the linebackers to the D-line.
 
"They did some things and schemed themselves out of it," Levy continued. "They slanted one way, the linebackers blitzed the other way. We saw the run, there's the hole, hit it and go."
 
While Arizona added a pair of McLaughlin field goals and a second White-to-Dickey touchdown connection in the second half, the Desert Swarm's performance was one for the ages in handing Miami its first shutout since 1979.
 
Arizona set a Fiesta Bowl record by holding Miami to 35 net rushing yards and Miami's 182 yards of offense and 2.8 yards per play were also the second-lowest in Fiesta Bowl history.
 
The defense recorded four sacks and three interceptions and forced two fumbles. Ten of Miami's 15 possessions ended in punts, with seven of those coming on 3-and-outs, including five where the Hurricanes punted from behind their original line of scrimmage.
 
In the defense's shutout, the Arizona offense should not be overlooked. Behind 257 rushing yards – 142 which came from Levy, the Offensive Player of the Game – Arizona controlled the time of possession at 37:20, a Bowl record at the time.
 
"We believed in Coach (Dick) Tomey and we got the right athletes in. We had phenomenal coaches on the coaching staff," Levy said. "They put all the pieces together, got the right defense and put us in the right position to win. It all came together at once. The season was one you couldn't have scripted. A 6-5 team last year going 10-2 and having an opportunity to represent Arizona at the Fiesta Bowl."
 
The Fiesta Bowl win was Arizona's first, and still only, New Year's Day bowl victory. With the 1993 Arizona team coming up on its 30-year anniversary, current head coach Jedd Fisch is ensuring the current generation remembers the past.
 
"It's really great to have a coach like Jedd Fisch here because he's honored the history of University of Arizona football," said Sanders, who returned to his alma mater in 2021 as coordinator of football alumni and high school relations. "It's brought our young men back to that timeframe to see that it can happen here, and it has happened here in the past at the University of Arizona."