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For years, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ football fans who live in Phoenix would routinely fill two large “Cat Cruiser’’ buses for the party-filled trip to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Stadium. On Saturday, a single bus was required. Only 11 people showed up.

I learned that even though attendance for the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥-NAU game was announced at 33,481, the official count of those in the stadium was 19,033, the lowest home game total since 1963.

Where once there was concern, there is pity.

After 15 consecutive losses, botching a football game to NAU isn’t measured in a sense of loss, it is measured in levels of embarrassment. It’s not hurtful, nothing like a first-round NCAA Tournament basketball loss to Santa Clara or Buffalo. An unprecedented losing streak leads to disinterest, not distress.

On ESPN’s Sunday morning NFL pre-game show, 1990s ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Hall of Famer Tedy Bruschi was subjected to good-natured ridicule by his fellow analysts. Your school lost to Northern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥! Bruschi wasn’t laughing, though. “Bear Down, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥,’’ he said with a grimace.

In Bruschi’s freshman season at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, 1991, the Wildcats lost three consecutive games 54-0, 54-14 and 36-9. Exactly a year later the Wildcats beat No, 1 Washington and rose to No 9 in the AP poll.

It’s clear there is a road back to success in college football. Even Duke and Kansas and Oregon State have recovered from 14-game losing streaks (or worse) to win again. The unknown is if it will take ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ three years of 13.

There is no profit in making this worse than it is. ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s football program began to erode in 2015 when Rich Rodriguez’s staffing and recruiting efforts bordered on ineptitude. It was made worse in 2018 when UA athletic director Dave Heeke hired Kevin Sumlin, who served three damaging and detached seasons at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, performing as the equivalent of an elementary school substitute teacher.

Class dismissed.

In the winning locker room Saturday night, NAU coach Chris Ball beamed, as you would expect. “This is something that really puts us on the map,’’ he said. “We’re going to get a lot of recognition for it.’’

If anyone knows the place on the football map that Jedd Fisch occupies, it is Chris Ball.

From 2008-11, Ball was the assistant head coach and defensive coordinator at Washington State, which suffered through the worst four-year period in of the Pac-12’s last 30 years. The Cougars lost 16 consecutive Pac-10/12 games. They went 9-40 overall. Everyone on the WSU staff was fired.

NAU pays Chris Ball $230,000 a year. Now it will add $15,000 to that sum, via a clause in his contract that guarantees him $15,000 when he beats a FBS team.

There is always a tomorrow in college football.

Late Saturday night, after the few fans at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Stadium had numbly gone home, NAU junior guard Jonas Leader and his father, Jim Leader, a ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ auto dealer, embraced on the turf near the Lumberjacks bench. They posed for a photo with the Jumbotron as a backdrop. The large red and blue message on the Jumbotron said BEAR DOWN.

After Leader’s productive football career at Canyon del Oro High School, he hoped to get a scholarship offer by RichRod. No offer was given. Given the instability and lack of effectiveness by ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s offensive line, Leader, a fifth-year junior, could’ve been what ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ lacks — a leader around which to rebuild.

But instead of singing Bear Down on Saturday night, or ever, Leader sang the Lumberjacks fight song, which includes the lyrics:

Lead the blue and gold to fame;

As we win another game.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s football team hasn’t sung the celebratory, post-game “Bear Down, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥,’’ since Oct. 5, 2019.

Look, this isn’t an insurmountable series of setbacks, no matter how mortifying a loss to NAU is (and how long it will be remembered). In the 2011-12 basketball preseason, a few months after missing a last-second shot against UConn that would’ve put ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ in the 2011 Final Four, the Wildcats lost to Seattle Pacific at McKale Center.

The Wildcats book-ended that season with a home loss to Bucknell. But over the next three seasons the Wildcats went 94-17 and were ranked as high as No. 3 in the AP poll all three years.

This, too, shall pass.

In a sports perspective, the UA football program is not unlike the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic cavern in the world. The Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific Ocean, is deeper than Mount Everest is high.

The Mariana Trench is 5,960 fathoms deep.

The UA’s losing streak and loss to NAU is simply unfathomable.