Seniors Make Last Stand WSU’s 1991 Recruiting Class Intent On Salvaging Disappointing Season Vs. Huskies

Fifteen Washington State seniors will strap on their silver helmets for the last time Saturday afternoon in Seattle and stare through their facemasks at the possibility of a sixth consecutive loss.

Unless the Cougars find a way to upset 22nd-ranked Washington in the 87th renewal of their Apple Cup football rivalry, those 15 seniors will trudge out of Husky Stadium with a 3-8 record that equals the school’s worst since 1974.

Somehow, it doesn’t seem like a fitting end for a recruiting class that showed so much promise when its charter members first arrived on campus back in the fall of 1991.

Five of those - wideout Albert Kennedy, safety Singor Mobley, cornerback Greg Burns, running back Derek Sparks and center Marc McCloskey - played and lettered as true freshman that year. And a sixth, defensive tackle Chad Eaton, started the next season after sitting out his freshman year as a Prop 48 casualty.

Strangely enough, McCloskey will be the only one of those six on the field for Saturday’s 12:30 p.m. kickoff in front of a sellout crowd of more than 74,000.

Kennedy, Mobley and Eaton exhausted their eligibility last fall and Burns and Sparks suffered career-ending injuries earlier this season.

In addition, backup quarterback Shawn Deeds is not expected to play because of a shoulder separation suffered in last Saturday’s 36-24 home loss to Stanford.

“They’ve been kind of a hard-luck class,” Cougars coach Mike Price said of his seniors. “They’ve been beat around quite a bit. But my opinion of them is that they’re winners.

“They’ve been to two bowl games and they’ve played on the highest ranked team ever to play at Washington State. I’ll remember them for the leadership they’ve provided this year and the way they’ve supported me when I’ve had to make some tough decisions.”

Burns, who missed last season to recover from knee surgery and had his senior year shortened to five games by a shoulder injury, said he remembers envisioning bigger things when he and 20 other high school standouts signed letters of intent with WSU in February of 1991.

“When our class first came in, we thought we were probably the best group ever to come in here,” he explained. “We figured that once it came our time to play, to go out there and show our stuff, we were going to be the best Cougar team ever.”

They came close. And had Drew Bledsoe stayed his full five seasons and quarterbacked last year’s 8-4 team that beat Baylor in the Alamo Bowl, there is no telling how rosey their junior season might have been.

Instead, most of the members of the senior class of 1995 will have to settle for something that only a handful of the hundreds who came before them were able to obtain - two bowl rings.

Fifth-year seniors Robert Booth, Chris Hayes, Eric Moore, John Scukanec, George Martin, Sparks, McCloskey, Deeds and Burns were all on the roster of the 1992 team that beat Utah in the Copper Bowl.

And so were fourth-year seniors Jay Dumas and Frank Madu.

“I’m very proud of that,” Burns said of his two bowl appearances. “I wish we could have gone to the big one, but now that it’s all over, I can at least say I went to two - and that’s as many as any other Cougar player.”

Hayes, a linebacker and co-captain, considers his two bowl rings a blessing, regardless of how his college career ends Saturday.

“I always wanted to get a ring and I ended up getting two,” he said. “God blessed me on that and all I can do is thank him for it.”

Dumas, a wide receiver and punt returner, who signed with WSU in 1992 but used up his eligibility in four years, said he didn’t realize how good the recruiting class of 1991 was until his junior year when he started considering himself a part of it.

“The whole time, I just considered the guys that I came in with as my class,” he explained. “But then I started thinking about these guys as my class - Eric Moore, Peto (Hayes), Burnsie - and I really started feeling highly about this group.

“And even though things haven’t turned out our way this year, I still do. I look back on the history of the school and see very few players who can say they went to Washington State and went to two bowl games - and had a good chance, really, to go to three. I take a lot of pride in that and I give a lot of thanks to the guys that were here ahead of me.”

Among the other seniors who joined the Class of ‘95 as transfers are defensive end Dwayne Sanders, wide receive Kearney Adams, tight end Jeff Thomas and defensive back Brian Walker.

All have a special memory of their stay at WSU and most center around the Apple Cup rivalry that has pushed its way to center-stage again this week.

One more win over the Huskies, they concur, would help salvage what has turned into an unexpected and disappointing close to their otherwise outstanding careers.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo