Jacob Thorpe: Playing Washington in Seattle every year would be a poison apple for Washington State

You may have noticed earlier this week a column from Matt Calkins of the Seattle Times, printed in The Spokesman-Review through some sort of content-sharing agreement. It’s a worthy piece of writing, in which Calkins explains why Washington should want to continue playing the Apple Cup even once Washington State is no longer in the same conference. He interviews a number of current Huskies, all of whom agreed the Apple Cup rivalry is a special institution and it should continue to be played in perpetuity.

That’s all well and good for the Huskies, but do the Cougars have the same consideration? What is best for WSU?

This discussion is happening this week because of a recent report by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports that states, among other things, Oregon State and WSU are finalizing schedules to play their old in-state Pac-12 rivals in 2024 and 2025.

That is all well and good, but I don’t think it means much for whether the rivalry remains viable for both schools going forward.

WSU administrators need look only 8 miles to the east to see an example of a school that (mostly) turned its back on a longstanding rivalry once the odds became too stacked against it. The University of Idaho walked away from the Battle of the Palouse in the late 1970s after nearly a century of WSU dominance. The schools tried again to make it an annual tradition in the early 2000s, but now play only intermittently.

There are many examples. Boston College and Notre Dame used to play annually, as did Ole Miss and Tulane. In those cases, there is a clear present-day advantage in resources for one school, but that is not always the case. Texas vs. Arkansas, West Virginia vs. Pittsburgh, and Nebraska vs. Oklahoma are examples of rivalries that ended because one school switched conferences, even though they remained in the Power Five group of schools.

Evidently, there are a lot of barriers to having a nonconference annual rivalry game. The most obvious is that college football teams only get three nonconference games per season. Ideally, at least one of those games is a surefire win against an overmatched opponent to improve your team’s chances of getting to six wins and bowl game eligibility.

Since WSU will no longer be receiving Pac-12 revenues, it is going to have to take some money games against Power Five opponents. It is also going to have to find interesting opponents to host in Pullman to keep fans engaged and sell season tickets.

I’m sure UW would be happy to have WSU visit Seattle every single year, dangling a bit of revenue to not have the elevated risk of losing in Pullman.

New UW Athletic Director Troy Dannen has already laid some of that groundwork, hinting the Huskies would need to play seven home games a year to make their move to the Big Ten financially viable.

“I don’t want to lose history and the traditions,” Dannen said during his introductory news conference. “I also know that I have this economic model, particularly as we move to the Big Ten, where we’re playing with people that frankly have an economic model that is, I don’t want to say far superior, but far greater than ours.”

But I don’t think it’s a good deal for WSU. The Cougars are going to need to keep fans motivated and help them buy in to a new reality of midmajor football. They need Cougars fans to get excited about new rivals, bowl games and the chance to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Getting blown out every year by your old rival is going to be counterproductive to those efforts, even if the pay is good.

If UW is not willing to visit Pullman a few times a decade, the Cougars should let the rivalry end. WSU is not the school that chose to disassociate.

To be fair, there are some schools that make it work.

Perhaps the administrators at WSU and UW should visit Clemson and South Carolina, Georgia and Georgia Tech, and Florida and Florida State to get some pointers. But again, those are all Power Five schools.

WSU has different incentives now. Letting the Huskies celebrate an annual beatdown at their expense in Seattle isn’t one of them.