Window Of Opportunity Getting Later For Cougars

Just so you can talk the programming talk, call it the “7 o’clock window.”

But what the folks who run college football - that is to say, the television folks - don’t understand is that in our part of the world, we usually know enough to shut the window this time of year.

And put up the storms.

Instead, we have Washington State and Cal kicking off Saturday night at the cockamamie hour of 7:15 p.m., long after the blue, gray October sky has done its fade to black. This, by the way, is homecoming at Wazzu, so you old grads who hope to last past the third quarter had better opt for a nap instead of a nip when you drop in on the Kappa Sigs.

And you’d better get used to it.

Kickoff the following Saturday when USC comes to Pullman has also been jacked back to 7:15 p.m. And it’s well within the realm of possibility that the Apple Cup game on Nov. 23 could be played in prime time.

It’s Cougar Football Saturday. But you won’t get home ‘til Sunday.

The portable starting time, of course, has become a Wazzu tradition, like illegal motion and the six words Glenn Johnson is no longer allowed to say over the P.A. It couldn’t have been but a few seasons ago that each of five Cougar home games had different kickoff times at the whim of television.

And television is good. Hooked up to the right cable, the glass teat brings 11 college games into our living rooms every Saturday and, on occasions like this, carries the Cougar concept into the hearts and minds of potential recruits up and down the West Coast, and sometimes beyond.

But there is a time and a place - and not 7:15 on a late October night and not in Pullman.

Not on consecutive Saturdays.

And God forbid on Nov. 23.

“Most fans recognize the importance of being on television,” said WSU athletic director Rick Dickson, “but we can’t expect them to make that sacrifice every Saturday.”

Except that’s exactly what they’re making.

If you never leave your La-Z-Boy on Saturday, it’s no big deal. But say you’re a family of four or more from Spokane who invested in homecoming seats last summer - figuring you needed to beat the rush and the worst that could happen is a 3:30 start. Now you’re huddled in your goose-down Slumberjack in near-freezing temperatures as TV timeouts drag the action beyond the 4-hour mark (WSU’s opener against Oregon ran 4:10). Sometime after 11:30, you escape the traffic snarl on Stadium Way. You creep home on potentially icy roads and if you’re lucky you’re home before the bars let out.

And for this privilege, you pay $20 a seat.

Of course, you could cut your losses and watch it at home, where the concessions are cheaper and there’s instant replay.

“It’s going to hurt us at the gate,” Dickson acknowledged. “Basically, we were budgeting for those two games to be sellouts or near sellouts, being homecoming and Dad’s Day.

“Now, I would hope we would approach 30,000.”

They’re doing more than just hoping. They’re offering 2-for-1 general admission seats with a coupon - a hell of a deal, but also another means of potentially alienating the early bird ticket buyer.

You might think you’re being sold out, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Dickson said the Cougars will receive about $180,000 per appearance “but it’s not as much a revenue decision. You don’t know how many ticket buyers it will cost you and it could end up a wash.”

Instead, he said, it’s the exposure factors - and being a team player.

The Pacific-10 Conference’s television package gives the league up to three games on the tube each Saturday - on ABC, which gets first pick, and on Fox, which farms games out to Fx and Prime. The three windows, generally, are the 12:30 ABC slot, 3:30 and 7:15.

“The league wanted to go to the (negotiating table) as unrestricted as it could,” Dickson said. “So in order to maximize the value of the package, the 7 o’clock window became a more prominent feature. We were asked that unless there’s a real justifiable reason we can’t accommodate a 7 o’clock start, we should be willing to take it once and maybe a couple of times in the season.”

But some schools are better team players than others.

“The institution has the right to say no,” said Duane Lindberg, the Pac-10’s tube dude. “Stanford and Cal, specifically with the Big Game and with night games, are very careful. Washington, after the first of October, is not required to do 3:30 games, though they are doing one this weekend.”

And forget 7:15. When then-athletic director Mike Lude put the upper deck on Husky Stadium, he made an agreement with his Montlake neighbors not to play at night.

Let that be a cue for the Pullman City Council.

Lindberg and the Pac-10 poobahs are not insensitive to the inconvenience of moving games - “we’re fully aware of the downside impact it has on fans,” he said - but they also have a bottom line to look at.

“We have an 18-game commitment (to the Fox-Prime people), and in that we were trying to do some Thursday night games or create some other windows,” Lindberg said. “But with an 11- or 12-week season, we almost have to do two games.”

And somehow, one of those twofers got slotted on Nov. 23, the weekend of the five Pac-10 rivalry games. Arizona-Arizona State is a natural for the prime time window - except that the Sun Devils are currently ranked fourth and should they remain that way, would almost certainly be snapped up by ABC.

Oregon-Oregon State may not even be attractive enough to be on radio. The Big Game can’t be played at night, though that doesn’t make it automatic for the 3:30 slot, either. And that leaves USC-UCLA and the Apple Cup.

“We may be in that situation,” Dickson admitted, “though I would hope we wouldn’t be expected to move since we’ve been afforded these two (7:15) games.”

But then, that doesn’t exactly close the window, does it?

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