Trip To Hawaii Doesn’T Seem Right
This is the sitcom which should have been canceled after the pilot, the football season which couldn’t end soon enough. And that’s a sentiment shared by everyone in the Pac-10 - from Pima County to Pullman, from the commissioner to the concessionaires, by fans and fund-raisers alike.
This was the fall when fun went AWOL.
Leave it to Washington State, then, to have another game left on the schedule.
Isn’t there something in the Constitution about having a right to a speedy burial? Oh, right. Speedy trial. As if.
This season of Cougars football was dread drawn out longer than O.J.
Our hunch is that this was why coach Mike Price was moved to call time out with 19 seconds remaining in Apple Cup 1999 with no hope of even getting the ball back, much less winning. By golly, if he has to suffer through another four quarters of this abuse, a few more Huskies fans were going to catch pneumonia before they would be allowed to gloat over Saturday’s 24-14 victory.
Never mind that the outcome was a foregone conclusion. By 1:30 in the afternoon. A month ago Tuesday.
The cutting wind, the miserable rain, the drama vacuum - all conspired to make this the most muted celebration of an Apple Cup in the 20th century. Once the updates started coming in from The Big Game at Stanford, it was obvious the Huskies were playing for some lovely parting gifts - a consolation invitation to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.
That’s the funny part. Even with the Huskies dodging the dreaded Sun Bowl sentence, Wazzu’s 12th game still makes for a sexier road trip. But, of course, that’s an empty conceit. Washington’s season had sizzle - redemption, excitement, rejuvenation, a star quarterback, a tent-revival new coach and, yes, the crushing disappointment of a Rose Bowl berth booted away.
And Wazzu?
“We kept fighting and didn’t give up,” said Price, for the umpteenth time this year.
Remind us to applaud, right after we congratulate America’s work force for punching the clock every morning and banks for continuing to pay interest on passbook savings. Apparently, this has been our job all season - to show up and see if the Cougs have quit yet, and then be impressed to learn that they haven’t. How are we to react when we realize they haven’t gotten any better, either?
The same chances were squandered Saturday that were muffed against Utah two months ago. The same plays went unmade, the same blocks whiffed, the same passes dropped, the same wide-open receivers missed. Also the same pleas for a pass interference flag - or whatever was needed at the moment - unheeded.
“It’s the same old crap,” summed up quarterback Steve Birnbaum, who has been up to his eyeballs in it and busy with his own shovel.
Indeed, the consistency of this tragi-comedy is eerie.
Inevitably, there is one major problem - too many turnovers, or too many penalties, or the ravages of injury, or the telltale third-quarter nap. This time, it was Wazzu’s running game - “miserable,” Price called it - that the Huskies bulldogged into submission. Aside from runs of 59 and 19 yards by backup quarterback Jason Gesser and Adam Hawkins on successive fourth-quarter plays, the Cougs netted 13 yards on the ground.
There was a silly sub-plot to this. Deon Burnett, within hyping distance of the Pac-10’s freshman rushing record, was caught in an injudicious boast by a student reporter for the UW Daily this week - in effect doing his broken-field running on tape and saving his tap-dancing for the field. Not only did he manage just 20 yards rushing, but he was hauled down from behind by sore-footed Lester Towns on a screen pass that should have gone for a touchdown. “Well, he said it and he better back it up, but he didn’t,” said Price. “It won’t happen again.”
Oh, let’s not suck the life out of the kid yet, OK?
The Cougars defense, meanwhile, played with its usual salt, with a couple of fatal slip-ups - on Paul Arnold’s 80-yard touchdown run that made it 24-6, and earlier on a flanker-option pass that was a page out of Price’s playbook. It was Dane Looker to Joe Jarzynka - two seniors whose last seasons haven’t been quite what they’d hoped on a personal level - and that giant sucking sound was cornerback LeJuan Gibbons swallowing the hook.
“I’m supposed to sell it a little bit,” laughed Jarzynka, “but the corner bit so hard on the screen fake I didn’t even have to. I just ran right by him.”
And then there’s the quarterback business. Again.
Price promised to get Gesser some work in this one, and he made good on it - though not soon enough or often enough to make a difference. The coach is, 11 weeks into this death march, apparently still as convinced as he was during Week 1 that Birnbaum “gives us the best chance to win.”
If so, then the Cougars never had a chance.
Gesser returned to action with the predictable deer-in-the-headlights demeanor - but he did come up with that brilliant scramble that led to WSU’s only touchdown. But the next time Wazzu got the ball back, out trotted Birnbaum.
Price tried to explain that decision away a couple of different ways - saying he thought Gesser had hurt his ribs being tackled after the scramble, and then saying the cold had made his previously injured hand swell up. But more to the point was this comment:
“We called six pass plays,” Price said, in reference to Gesser’s happy feet, “and he didn’t throw it six times.”
So what? Even when he didn’t throw it, something happened.
More will happen in Hawaii next week - and not all of it good - because Gesser will play more. He should start and go the distance, though obviously that’s too much to ask.
He, like the rest of the Cougs and their fans, will have to wait ‘til next year. Again.
“We needed this to at least feel good about ourselves,” said safety Billy Newman, “and we didn’t get it.” Like a bad joke.