Governor’s Cup Brings Into Play Study Of Opposites

So Eastern Washington University shelled out $84,000 for a study which revealed that the school doesn’t necessarily have a poor image, but no image at all.

This the consultant could have deduced for the price of a football ticket.

Attendance is the Inland Northwest’s new - well, not so new - hot button. In Pullman, the quarterback caterwauls because Martin Stadium doesn’t sell out for the undefeated Cougars. In Cheney, a team every bit as worthy - 7-1 and ranked either sixth or 11th, you pick the poll - is just as unappreciated, struggling to half-fill its 7,000-seat home.

So the strategy you second-guess this week may have nothing to do with going for two and everything to do with EWU and Idaho trying to chase customers into 28,000-seat Albi Stadium.

Don’t bother. It’s a good call. Somebody has to fight the indifference.

They call this the Governors’ Cup, though the campaign litter-ature you’ll have to wade through Saturday to get to your seat will lean more to mayoral mudslinging and trigger-lock hysteria. Saturday’s score will not be incidental, as it has been some years, but there is considerable peripheral intrigue.

Take Idaho.

With two lopsided losses, the young Vandals have quickly played themselves out of Big West title contention - an indication that the competitive rigors of their upward mobility may be a bit more challenging than once advertised. In the meantime, the administration lobbies for NCAA legislation that would make Idaho’s Division I-A/I-AA limbo less punitive, and tries to maintain a certain bald-faced innocence about the notion of playing future schedules in Pullman and abandoning a campus facility built with student funds.

Sounds like a school in need of an $84,000 study, frankly.

Eastern, meanwhile, revels not only in its football renaissance, but in the board of trustees’ reaffirmation last week - once and for all, we’re led to believe - in the school’s commitment to being Division I. “That’s like beating Montana,” said athletic director Dick Zornes. “For those of us who’ve been fighting this war all these years, that may be the biggest win we’ve ever had.”

So consider the blocking and tackling Saturday a bonus.

And even that should be good, the shellackings Idaho has administered the last five years notwithstanding.

The Eagles obviously feel better equipped to cope with the Vandals this time around. At 7-1, why shouldn’t they?

Yet you’d think somebody at Eastern would have misgivings about the timing - playing a nonconference nemesis while trying to position itself for a possible championship and the postseason.

“About playing a non-conference game, yeah,” said EWU coach Mike Kramer. “About playing Idaho, no. We welcome the opportunity to play Idaho because they’ve been such a great team over the years with such a great tradition - and part of that tradition has been their absolute disdain for us.

“They never played us. They just pulverated us.”

Now, the Eagles have had a few moments in this series. They could have more, even given Idaho’s increasing scholarship advantages. Eastern has weathered the resource squeeze of the late 1980s, and the youth movement of Kramer’s early years.

“There are a lot of things that make us think our program will stay at this level,” said Zornes.

Whether they’ll be able to measure that against Idaho is another matter.

The current contract calls for just this game and a return next year in Moscow. In 1999, Eastern will play Boise State - along with Central Washington and Southern Utah - as Zornes seeks a reasonable balance to EWU’s non-conference schedule.

He has pitched the idea of an EWU-Idaho game at Albi every year, and received no response.

“It’s a game that makes sense,” he said, “regardless of what their status is. We need to play a I-A game as part of our schedule. This one doesn’t cost much, it’s a pretty good draw and there’s good interest in the area as to the outcome.”

Of course, Saturday will be the barometer of that.

Eastern’s forays to Albi in the ‘80s ended badly - but as Zornes himself pointed out, “we weren’t a very good football team then.

“I was only looking at it from a coaching standpoint then, and I was happy to bring the games back to campus. But in looking back, there were times we marketed better at Albi than we have out here.”

Which is exactly what Eastern is trying to do now, and has a few things going for it. The Eagles have taken on Brett Sports as a marketing partner for this game and a 1998 rematch with Montana. Winderemere has signed on as a sponsor. Idaho figures to bring a few more fans than Rocky Mountain or Eastern Oregon. The Cougs are on TV at 7 p.m., not 1.

Zornes is hoping for a turnout of 10,000, knowing full well that weather could skew the number 2,000 in either direction.

“Everybody is looking for that McKenna’s Gold in Spokane,” said Kramer, “that gold vein that’s never been discovered about how you can tap the passions of people and get them to dig in their pocket and buy a ticket to an intercollegiate athletic contest.

“Maybe this is the game. There’s a whole group of fans who probably haven’t been in Albi since WSU played its last game there. It’s a great place to watch football, let alone two teams that consider themselves … well, one team that considers itself a rival. The other team considers the opposing team to be a nuisance.”

For the price of a ticket, it’s a study you can do yourself.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review