Not the finale …

PULLMAN – The Apple Cup has always been the climax of the major college football season in the state of Washington – as opposed to Washington State or the University of Washington.

Two rivals from opposite sides of the state – and we’re not just speaking geographically here – face off in one last titanic battle, leaving everything on the field in an effort to prove superiority for the next nine months.

Nothing tops it.

There’s the guy in the cubicle next to you, taking his purple sweatshirt out of mothballs and wearing it all week. There are fans screaming their lungs out, knowing they won’t be sitting outdoors at a football game until September. There’s that assistant coach exhorting a nicked up player to go all out, because they’ve got nine months – without a bowl – or a month – if a bowl is on the horizon – to rest.

The be all and end all.

Except it isn’t.

Not this year.

This season, for the first time since the colleges moved this game to the end of the schedule after World War II, both schools have another game to play.

At least the Cougars are headed to Hawaii over Thanksgiving weekend. The Huskies have it worse, a lot worse. They not only have another game, they have a bye week before they head south to play Cal in Tyrone Willingham’s final game.

Talk about devaluing a product.

“In the perfect world, you would love to have (the Apple Cup) be the last game,” Willingham admitted.

But the world of college football isn’t perfect – see Championship, BCS – and finishing the regular season with rivalry games may be even more rare of an occurrence down the road.

The 12-game schedule and the Pac-10’s nine-game slate, as Willingham put it, “have necessitated some changes in the schedule.”

In the past 50 years, Washington State has played a post-Apple Cup, non-bowl game only four times: losing at Houston in 1959, tying Cal in Berkeley at the end of 1987, defeating Hawaii in the islands in 1999 and stopping UCLA for a Rose Bowl-clinching win in 2002.

The Huskies have played even fewer. In fact, the first time UW scheduled a post-Apple Cup regular-season game was last year, when it traveled to Hawaii.

The only other time Washington had to play someone after the Cougars occurred in 2001, when 9/11 forced UW to switch its September game against Miami to Nov. 24.

“It would be very nice to do that,” Willingham said of finishing with WSU. “As you know, this year we had some difficulty … in that we would have been playing 12 consecutive football games.

“We tried to find some relief in there, so we created some byes and, in doing so, we did create the California game after the Apple Cup.”

The Cougars had a chance of playing in Hawaii, something that comes along only rarely. And they had a chance to do it over Thanksgiving week, when students are out of school. Flop the games, and the students are gone for the rivalry game.

“For us here, we want our students to be part of (the rivalry), like any university does,” WSU coach Paul Wulff said. “They don’t want them to be in the middle of break and then hold a game where a number of students won’t have the opportunity to be around because they want to be with their families.

“It’s very important we try to keep the game centered around the university and the students and allow them to be part of that. That’s why I’m a big believer in not moving this game to a time period where school isn’t in session.”

But still, Wulff would rather end the season with the Huskies.

“I’m a little bit more of a traditionalist,” he said. “I’m a big believer that your rivalry game should be the last (regular season) game of the year.”

Around the conference

Four schools have byes this week – UCLA, Oregon, USC and Arizona State – and for some it didn’t come at the right time. “It seems like every time we get something going, we’ve got a bye,” ASU coach Dennis Erickson said. His Sun Devils have won their last two – albeit against the Huskies and WSU – and still have a shot at a bowl. “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel for us,” Erickson said. … UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel spent his younger years in the Phoenix area, and he remembers one thing vividly: “Going to every Sun Devils game with my uncle Kelly from when I was 5 until I went away to college,” he said. “I was a huge Sun Devils fan.”

•The other rivalry game this week is the self-titled Big Game, pitting Cal and Stanford. “It’s a pretty healthy tradition; healthy rivalry,” said Cal coach Jeff Tedford, who was involved in the Civil War as an assistant at Oregon. “You have a lot of people who work together. … To me, it’s not a nasty rivalry with the fans. Obviously, it’s pretty heated with the players. With the fans, I don’t see the bitterness that, say, the Civil War had.”

•Stanford was able to move the ball on the ground pretty well against USC, gaining 202 yards. USC coach Pete Carroll knows why. “They had a 40-yard scramble and they had a 40-yard play where four guys missed the tackle,” he said. “It was nothing more than that.” … The Ducks broke out their new black uniforms with black helmets against Arizona and coach Mike Bellotti says there is still more to come. “They’re going to keep on coming,” he said of the new uniforms. “Our tradition is innovation. That’s become the buzzword.”

•However, Bellotti doesn’t like the trend toward playing games after the rivalry games. “I do not like the idea of playing another game after the rivalry game,” he said. “I would like, personally, the rivalry game to be the last game of the season. I think that’s the way it ought to be … and it’s a shame it’s losing some of its clout in importance to people.”

•Jim Harbaugh was involved with one of the best rivalries in college football as a quarterback with Michigan – the game with Ohio State. The Stanford coach said Bo Schembechler “was like you were preparing for that game 365 days a year. That was the game you prepared all spring for, winter conditioning, summer, training camp, two-a-days, you knew some piece of the work was getting done to beat Ohio State.”

Cougars notes

Quarterback Kevin Lopina wasn’t cleared to practice, so J.T. Levenseller ran the first team. Coach Paul Wulff still expects Lopina to be able to go and “he will be the starter.” Lopina said he hopes to be cleared today. … Brandon Gibson, the Cougars most feared offensive weapon, didn’t practice Tuesday. He was in Arizona for a family funeral, according to Wulff, who didn’t know exactly what the relationship was. Wulff expects Gibson back at practice Wednesday.

•The injury situation cleared up a little on defense, with Andy Mattingly and Myron Beck practicing, Mattingly with a brace on his ankle and Beck with a club-like cast on his broken hand. Linebacker Lewis Bland sat out with ice on the knee he hurt against Arizona State while Alfonso Jackson skipped practice as well. Their status is undetermined. Tyrone Justin did some drills, while Kevin Kooyman went full speed throughout. … Other than Lopina, the offense was near full strength, with running back Logwone Mitz going through practice with a yellow jersey. … Chantz Staden was on crutches. He suffered a torn ACL in his right knee on a kickoff return against Arizona State, saying it occurred when he planted his leg, not on a hit. Staden will need reconstructive surgery and will be out until late summer at the earliest.

•With the Apple Cup featuring two teams with 10 losses apiece, Wulff said one cliché is really true. “You hear people say all the time you throw out the records, and I think that’s true regardless of what the records are now,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ever really been about the records before, now and in the future.” … There is also a school of thought that winning the Apple Cup plays a big deal in in-state recruiting. Wulff doesn’t buy that one, either. “I don’t know if it does or doesn’t,” he said. “I would like to think that it does not. … A player who is going to make a decision, he wants to see the next four or five years, what they are going to be a part of.” … One cliché he does buy into has to do with turnovers. WSU is last in the nation in turnover margin and that is a big part of its problems, Wulff said. “Whoever holds that ‘honor’ at the end of the year is always going to have a record that is not very impressive,” he said.