Cougars Keep Eye On Big Prize

Focus pocus.

Surely we can agree on this: There can be no disparaging Washington State’s powers of concentration. From the moment the Cougars swept the Los Angeles schools to open the 1997 football season, their giddy legion has - silently or otherwise - extrapolated those victories into a more-or-less inevitable Elysium.

You know it as the Rose Bowl.

The Cougs, meanwhile, simply had to do the dirty work. One game at a time.

We figured their almost manic single-mindedness in this regard again had a Cougar’s share to do with Saturday’s 38-28 subduing of Stanford - that and the unconditional love from 40,306 fans, a Martin Stadium record. It was billed as a sellout but perhaps more accurately described as a handout - the marketing folks doing everything short of sending a limo and a driver to deliver people to their seats.

But focus - that’s the real ticket.

We were discussing this with Ryan Leaf, the Heisman poser - not poseur - when he revealed he’d spent part of halftime watching the Washington-UCLA game on the tube.

“I was watching it before the game, watching it at halftime,” he said. “I saw Skip Hicks score the one that made it 52-20 (UCLA). I came out and said, ‘It’s over, they beat U-Dub for us.’ Now we can cheer the Bruins on next week and cheer on the Cougars.”

OK, so maybe it was just Leaf. Maybe he was the only …

“There were probably about 30 of us in the training room with the TVs on before the game,” said offensive tackle Ryan McShane.

Oh. Never mind.

“Everybody was still focused on our game,” he insisted, “but we knew Washington was kind of in the balance.”

Not anymore.

We’ll not bother sending you into scenario anxiety, other than to say that of the Pac-10’s fab four, only Washington was eliminated in Saturday’s primaries. Consultation with Pac-10 officials concluded that the Huskies, humiliated 52-28 by UCLA, cannot win any of the Rose Bowl tiebreakers - pre-empting a debate on dubious justice that could have rivaled the Au Pair verdict.

Still, the Cougs need to beat UW next Saturday.

Not to go to the Rose Bowl, necessarily. Just to do it.

It has been so ever since the gun ended the USC triumph. It has been so forever.

“Even if there wasn’t all this at stake, you still have to beat the Huskies,” said McShane’s linemate, Jason McEndoo. “You always think about the Apple Cup. Either you’re a Cougar or a Husky - nothing in between.”

So there was something otherworldly about Saturday’s events. No matter how hard - how unexpectedly hard - the Cardinal made it on Wazzu, there would be no panic. Whatever tricks the Stanfords had up their elbow pads - fake field goals, fake reverses - Leaf would manufacture better magic and Michael Black would find bigger holes. A precocious freshman like Lamont Thompson would come up with something - an interception or a score-saving tackle - to showcase a quality many thought a WSU team would never betray in November: depth. The Cougars would spoil no future drama stumbling here.

“They deserve to be where they are,” Stanford running back Anthony Bookman said of the Cougars. “We had a situation where we could beat them and we didn’t.”

The Cardinal has company. Five other teams can say the same thing.

And now the Huskies get their chance.

It is rare air where the Cougars are, up there at 9-1. It is rarer still when the Huskies aren’t right along side, casting the ultimate shadow.

“We saw the cracks in the paper during the season - the guys at Washington saying we’d probably blow it before we got to this game,” said McShane. “It’s fun to be here and be 9-1.”

Mused McEndoo, “We’re the team to beat. It’s pretty incredible.”

No kidding. Shall we recite the litany? Picked to finish seventh. Five one-time walk-ons in the starting lineup. A standout ensemble of receivers, none of whom played the position in high school. A Heisman hopeful from - oh, man - Montana.

“We’re 9-1,” marveled the irrepressible Leon Bender, who doesn’t marvel at much. “I’ve never been 9-1. A lot of people on this team have never won a championship at all.

“A lot of us have been overlooked by big-time schools, schools that didn’t believe. WSU believed in us. We just have to show each day, each game, that these other schools lost a jewel, they lost a gem with each guy on this team.”

Privately, the Cougars will take a little pride that they didn’t cost the Apple Cup any of its glamor, that it was the Huskies who swooned. Privately, they will remind one another that they are the ones who came up just 3 minutes short of being 10-0 and a dark horse for the national title. Privately, they will snort about UW’s championship pretensions and 7-3 reality.

Well, not altogether privately.

“I heard they were down (to UCLA) 52-20,” said Bender, “and I said, ‘No, they’re not.’ Somebody’s lying. I think they got a little more pride than that.”

But rocking or reeling, the Huskies are a very real rival.

“I’m real excited to play in Husky Stadium,” said Bender. “When I was a freshman, they peed on us - I swear to God, those fans are vicious. Coming out of the tunnel. It was cold - I think it was something below, with the wind-chill factor - and I thought these fans are crazy. I’m not whipping mine out in this weather.”

Hmm. Well, disrespect takes many forms.

“I didn’t to go to the Huskies,” said defensive end Dorian Boose. “Their program didn’t fit me. I’ve seen a lot of players go into that program and just sink down and never get a chance to play. Me and (former Cougar) Derek Henderson were (on a visit) at their game with Arizona and the coaches pretty much snubbed us. We never heard from them again, other than a letter they told a secretary to send out.”

Seems you can find focus in the rear-view mirror, as well.

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