Cougs, Huskies have a history

The first Cougar-Husky game was played in 1900 – long before the terms Cougar, Husky or even Apple Cup existed – and immediately set the tone for a century of cross-state squawking.

Here’s how a Pullman-based correspondent described those first-game conditions in Seattle: “The soil being of an entirely different kind from that on the east side, our team was hampered by having to wade through a different kind of mud from that which they had been accustomed to.”

In other words: We woulda won except for their inferior mud.

That wet mess of gumbo contributed to a sloppy 5-5 tie, a game unmemorable except for one thing: It was the first time the Washington Agricultural College (WAC, later to become Washington State University) and the University of Washington tackled each other in the young sport of football.

Saturday, these two teams will continue the rivalry that was known then simply as the WAC-UW football game. It wasn’t christened the Governor’s Trophy until 1934 and the Apple Cup until 1962, as part of a deal with the Washington Apple Commission. Several games were skipped in those early years and again during the two world wars, making tomorrow’s game the 100th of the series.

That first game also set another precedent, illustrated by this passage from The Spokesman-Review: “She (WAC) was in possession of the ball about two-thirds of the time and carried it nearly twice as far as the U of W, but would always make some costly mistake when within a few yards of goal.”

In other words, they Coug-ed it, long before the team was even called the Cougars. That didn’t come until 1919; earlier mascots included “Squirt the terrier.”

On the other hand, the “Sun Dodgers” (UW’s pre-Husky nickname, a reference to Seattle weather) didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory. UW missed an extra point for the win.

In those days, a football game had a rougher, less organized feel – kind of like an intramural rugby match. The crowd stood on the sidelines and was estimated at 1,500, a huge gathering for the time.

This 1900 game was “the first time the (Pullman) team traveled into distant parts,” said Enoch Albert Bryan in his “Historical Sketch of the State College of Washington.” WAC had been playing since 1894 but only against nearby colleges, such as Whitman College and the University of Idaho.

The players usually wore few pads and no helmets, which explains why, in that 1900 game, “the heaviest man in the WAC line received a bad kick in the head and went out.”

Even the scoring rules were different in 1900. A touchdown was worth five points, which is why the score was 5-5. Both teams missed their extra-point kick.

College football’s fabled “color and pageantry” wouldn’t fully develop for many more years, but during the Pullman school’s earliest games, there were two colors on the field that would have stunned today’s Cougar fans: Pink and blue.

Those were the Pullman team’s original school colors, chosen either in homage to the colors of the Palouse sunsets or because the school’s first building was nicknamed “The Crib,” derived from “the cradle of learning,” according to Richard B. Fry’s “The Crimson and Gray: 100 years With the WSU Cougars.”

The school colors weren’t officially changed to crimson and gray until about a week before that 1900 game. In any case, the uniforms all ended up mud-brown.

“The game was played in the rain and mud, which soon saturated the suits and was responsible for many fumbles,” said the correspondent.

A year later, the wind and the rain of Pullman blew the home team to its first victory against UW, by a score of 10-0. An S-R correspondent, probably a WAC student, slyly noted that before the game the UW boys had “expressed a degree of confidence in their ability to win the game.” A WAC player named “Rabbit” Wells punished their hubris.

“The springs in his feet got to working and he dashed around right end, caroming off several shoulders and landing one yard from the goal line after a 29 yard run,” wrote the correspondent. “Proff carried the ball across.”

The Pullman boys also had some help from Mother Nature. The game was called with two minutes left, on account of darkness.

UW won the next three years in a row. In 1907, after a two-year hiatus, Washington State College, as it was then known, got revenge by scoring the winning touchdown with only five minutes left. The most significant statistic of that game: 3,000 spectators showed up in Seattle. The game’s popularity had doubled.

In 1908, cross-state partisanship was in full cry, by the evidence of the game story in the S-R. This time, the anonymous correspondent was clearly a UW student or at least a fan. He wrote that the UW men “outclassed the heavy farm boys from Pullman.” He was clearly incensed that the game’s outcome was determined by what he believed to be a bogus two-point safety.

Here’s what happened: A WSC punt rolled almost to the goal line, where a UW player pounced on it. The correspondent claimed that the UW player landed on it six inches short of the goal. But then the Pullman players “piled on him,” shoving both player and ball six inches past the goal. Officials ruled it a safety and awarded WSC two points.

“The state college players had no right to force it back of the line,” said the reporter. “It was a bitter pill for Washington to swallow, for (UW Coach Gil) Dobie’s team had previously played the husky farmers off their feet.”

By husky, he meant fat. It would not be the nickname of the opposing team for 14 more years.

The result was a 6-6 tie, but the true significance of the game came in the description of the scene in Seattle.

“Nearly 4,000 people crowded the grandstands on the north and the long bleachers on the south,” said the S-R. “… A blaze of color in the stands and a riot of noises from brass bands, cow bells, gongs and leather-lunged rooters gave Denny field all the picturesque features that go with the great college sport.”

In other words, both the sport and the rivalry had come of age in the Pacific Northwest.

Then in 1910, the sport came of age in Spokane. The WSC-UW game was played at the old Recreation Park, not far from today’s Spokane Community College. The newspaper reported that about 2,500 spectators showed up, making it the biggest football crowd ever in Spokane. UW won 16-0, but the game was considered a local triumph anyway.

“It proves that the town wants, and can pay for, big college football games,” said the paper.

WSU won only nine more games from 1910 to 1950, but that didn’t seem to dampen the intensity of the rivalry. By the 1930s, games in Husky Stadium were drawing 30,000 to 40,000 people. A 1948 WSU win at Rogers Field in Pullman drew 23,000 fans, a massive crowd for less-populated Eastern Washington.

Meanwhile the Cougars remained especially frustrated in away games. Going into the 1951 game, the Cougars hadn’t won a game in Seattle since 1930.

That made it even more delicious when the Cougars quieted the fans in Seattle by pulling out a 27-25 win. Sportswriter Danny May called it a “grid spine-tingler that left 52,000 fans limp.”

The UW dominance continued, with notable and legendary interruptions, into the present. Going into Saturday’s game, UW has won more than twice as many games in the matchup, with a record of 64-29-6.

Yet the annual game has never lost its “bitterly contested” flavor, to use a 1908 phrase. If these teams were “old rivals,” as a headline called them in 1908, now they have become primordial foes.

At least the Pullman boys no longer have to worry about that bizarre Seattle mud. Husky Stadium has artificial turf.