Here's hoping for another Apple Cup to remember, for the right reasons

A colleague of mine at KJR-FM who happens to be an arrogant loud-mouth Husky — which is redundant, I realize — informed me this week that the Cougars have won 19 Apple Cups in my lifetime, heading into Saturday night's game.

If I were 19, I’d be happy as heck about that. But I’m 65. So we’ve won 19 of the last 64 Apple Cups, but I don’t really count the first 17 years because I grew up a Husky fan who loved Sonny Sixkiller. I saw the light when I graduated from high school — that beautiful bright light from God’s Country that told me I should be a Coug.

I have never made a better decision, unless my second wife happens to be reading this, in which case going to Washington State was my second-best decision. I hope she doesn’t subject me to a lie detector test.

As I’m sitting here Friday morning at a Starbucks in the Renton Highlands — I tried the McDonald’s next door but it’s only allowing drive-through customers these days — a kid came over after spotting my Cougar Christmas sweatshirt. He and his girlfriend are seniors at WSU and were on their way back to school after Thanksgiving break.

I told them the years I spent in Pullman were the four best years of my life, and they smiled, understanding what I meant rather than thinking, “Man that oldster’s life must have sucked since he left.”

By now they know that WSU actually is great for them now, as is was for me way back when.

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Naturally I raised my kids as Cougs, and my 31-year-old daughter had as much fun at WSU as I did while meeting her future husband there.

My 18-year-old twin sons also left Friday morning for Pullman, hoping to arrive in time to watch the WSU basketball team play Friday afternoon.

They’re all into it, saying “Go Cougs” to Cougs who say “Go Cougs" to them, rooting against the Huskies every chance they get. I’m so proud.

Last year Mikey and Stevie were right next to Jayden de Laura when he planted the Coug flag on the purple W at Husky Stadium, and I can still see their ecstatic faces when the Pac-12 Network replays that wild midfield scene after the Cougs obliterated the Dawgs 40-13 to end an eight-game Apple Cup losing streak.

That’s the way my association with the Cougs began, with an eight-game losing streak to the Huskies, starting in 1974 when I enrolled as a freshman at WSU.

The streak included one of the most heart-breaking losses of all in 1981. We just needed to beat the Dawgs at Husky Stadium to go to the Rose Bowl, but we lost 23-10 and played in the Holiday Bowl instead. I was a sportswriter at the Anchorage Daily News at the time and flew down for the game.

My buddies and I did not have tickets but snuck in, pretending we were checking in as vendors to sell soda pop and popcorn, and we somehow pulled it off.

The next year, in my first unprofessional journalist moment, we were 2-7-1 entering the Apple Cup but beat the sixth-ranked Huskies 24-20, knocking them out of the Rose Bowl.

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In a big turning point in the game, Washington kicker Chuck Nelson missed his first field goal of the season, which helped us pull off the upset, causing students to tear down our goal posts and deposit them in the Palouse River.

For the first half I was in the pressbox covering the game for the now-defunct Bellevue Journal-American. You can’t cheer in the pressbox, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I left in the third quarter and joined some friends in the stands, merrily swigging multiple shots of MacNaughton’s with them and later composing myself enough to conduct interviews and write a story.

Ten years later, it was an unforgettable day and night and weekend for many reasons. Some are embarrassing, but I’ll reveal them anyway because at 65 I think the statute of limitations for being a drunken dummy has expired.

In 1992 the Cougs won an Apple Cup classic known as the Snow Bowl because we frolicked in the white stuff, scoring 29 points in the third quarter en route to a 42-23 victory.

I had planned to watch the game at a viewing party at my neighbor’s house in Issaquah, but had tickets to sell. Back then they had charter flights to Pullman for Cougar games, so I went to Sea-Tac just to see if I could sell my tickets to Coug fans who were on the “Coug Air” flight.

But when I found out that a seat had opened up on the sold-out plane, I called my first wife and asked her if it would be all right if I went. She gave me the green light and in hindsight, I’m not so sure if I should be glad she did. A red light might have been better.

I proceeded to be an idiot and had way too much 151 rum as I watched the Cougs demolish the Huskies. Thirty minutes after the game ended we took a bus to the airport for our flight back to Seattle. But once I got to the airport, I was a mess and ended up curled up in a bathroom stall and missed my flight.

Next thing I knew, I woke up and saw a Pullman cop looking down at me, and I figured I was headed to the police department for a charge of public stupidity or intoxication or something along those lines.

But in a miracle of miracles, he asked: “Hey, because of the weather a pilot couldn’t make it in. Would you like a room at the Quality Inn?”

I couldn’t say yes fast enough and off I went in his police car to the motel. The next day, since the conditions were still as awful as I felt, I had to take a bus to Lewiston to fly back to Seattle.

I slept in the extra bedroom that night and I can still picture my first wife standing at the foot of my bed telling me how pathetic I was.

She was right of course, and it wasn’t the first time I’d had regrets about my actions when it came to Cougar football.

One night after we held a party to watch one of the games at our house in the 1990s, things got a little too out of control, likely because we won and I’d maybe had one too many margaritas.

As we stood next to each other in the kitchen, she looked at me and said: “I’m so sick of you and your (bleeping) Cougars.”

I couldn’t blame her. After we were divorced in the late ‘90s, I apologized for my behavior over the years and I’m happy to say that she and I have a great relationship now.

From a Coug perspective, the 1997 Apple Cup was the greatest one of ‘em all. The 41-35 victory put us in the Rose Bowl for the first time in 67 years. Ryan Leaf and Chris Jackson hooked up on two long touchdown passes, and Lamont Thompson came up with three of the five interceptions thrown by Brock Huard. Most of us Cougs celebrated on the Husky Stadium turf, realizing that our dream of wanting to go to Pasadena once in our lifetime had finally come true.

Five years after that, I was back in the stands at Martin Stadium with my second wife watching the Cougs lose the 2002 Apple Cup in triple overtime. That was unfortunate because we actually had an outside chance at a national championship, believe it or not. There was a questionable call in the third OT that went the Huskies’ way, and after the game ended, WSU students let out their frustrations by tossing bottles onto the field.

Our best Apple Cup stretch occurred from 2004-08 when we won four of five, and I always consider Alex Brink one of our greatest quarterbacks ever because he went 3-1 against the Dawgs. That 2008 Apple Cup, after Brink graduated, was one of the most memorable because we won with one of our worst teams, handing the Huskies a final loss during their 0-12 season, making Tyrone Willingham our favorite U-Dub coach ever.

Now here it is in 2022, 10 years after our last Apple Cup win at Martin Stadium, when we defeated the Dawgs on Andrew Furney’s field goal in overtime.

As Tim Booth of the Associated Press pointed out this week, something unforgettable has always happened in the Apple Cup in years that ended in “2.” Will that be the case in 2022?

If so, I happily admit that I won’t have any more stories to tell because I’ll be curled up on my couch this time around, recovering from knee replacement surgery, sober as a saint, fingers crossed that the Cougs can win for the 20th time in my life.

Jim Moore is a longtime Pacific Northwest sportswriter and sports radio host on 950 KJR at 10 a.m. weekdays with Jason Puckett, and writes a regular column for the Kitsap Sun. Contact Jim at jimmoorethego2guy@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @cougsgo.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Washington Cougars v. Huskies: Here's hoping for another Apple Cup