A Bolt Of Crimson Out Of The Blue
Andy Knudson was standing by an Alaska Airlines baggage carousel at Los Angeles Interna tional Airport on Wednesday morning when he revealed his game plan.
Reaching into a piece of luggage, he pulled out a big, folded “Washington State University” flag.
“My seat is in the middle of a Michigan section,” he said. “But I plan on making my presence known.”
Like so many others, the ‘89 WSU graduate now living in Seattle had pledged that if the Cougs ever made it to the Rose Bowl, he’d go. “So this is just keeping a promise,” he said.
His pick? “Cougs, 35-24.”
Overheard on an elevator early Wednesday at the hotel where the WSU marching band is staying: “I hardly got any sleep,” one bleary band member reported to another. “People were in my room playing Monopoly all night.”
Quarterbacks aren’t the only things that come from the Palouse: Los Angeles newspaper readers have been treated to a modest barrage of “Give Peas a Chance” ads from the Inland Northwest promoting split peas, lentils, chickpeas and the Cougs.
They make a nice change from all the plastic surgery ads.
Keeping score at a roadside Rose Bowl souvenir stand next to a nude dancing establishment: An unsmiling woman clutching a wad of cash in a beefy fist said WSU stuff sold better than Michigan items on Tuesday. But by midday Wednesday, Michigan was catching up.
Who ya gonna call: The Los Angeles 911 emergency response system was out of commission Tuesday night. And on Wednesday morning, a couple of WSU fans in a Santa Monica restaurant talked about it. One man noted that the news had been presented with a degree of alarm on local TV broadcasts.
“Yeah,” said the other guy at the table. “But people around here probably wake up in the morning thinking that there’s a good chance they’ll have to call 911 before the day is through.”
That telltale wheat-fed look: Testing our hunch that we could spot Cougs even when they were not wearing WSU apparel, we stopped a blandly handsome man in downtown L.A. and said something like, “You’re a Washington State fan, aren’t you?”
Uh, not quite. He was a German tourist.
Today’s Slice question: If WSU wins, will Disneyland have to relinquish to the Inland Northwest - at least for one day - the slogan “Happiest place on Earth”?
, DataTimes