Christilaw: Cougars show how fun unpredictability can be

Time to ’fess up.

Everyone who honestly believed that, come Halloween Week, Washington State would have a significantly better record than the Seattle Seahawks please raise your hand. And please remember that Santa Claus’ list is far from finalized at this point.

Just what I thought.

Half the fun of any sports season is the anticipation that builds and builds until, finally, the season starts.

The newsstand at your local grocer spent the summer promising the latest scoop on college football, professional football, fantasy football. Not just one copy on each subject, either. And that includes the early birds who had Gonzaga players on the cover of their basketball prediction issues six months ahead of the first tip-off.

It’s a cottage industry. And for the most part, they all pretty much say the same thing, give or take an adjective or three. Anyone surprised that Ohio State was the consensus pick to win the national championship? That was a bold piece of prognostication there.

If we all took a grain of salt with each prediction, we’d be hypertensive.

Fans read them, debate them and berate them. And we keep buying them.

And then something fascinating happens and the predictions go out the window.

The new season starts and every team in the country starts with a blank slate – even the ones on NCAA probation. And the surprises start rolling in right along with the upsets.

Even the most hard-core Michigan fan had to stop and shake their head at the incredibly painful way their Wolverines lost, again, to the arch-rival Michigan State Spartans. And if they didn’t like that finish, there was always the finish to the Georgia Tech-Florida State game a week later.

When it comes to the Cougars, the mystery contained in those preseason magazines boils down to whether WSU will be picked to finish last in the Pac-12 Conference, or just next-to-last.

We’ve gotten used to under-performances and some extremely creative ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Even in bowl games.

But you have to admit that it’s never been boring, and there have always been an athlete or two who have thrilled us. And broken our collective hearts.

Cougar fans persevere and take deep pride in the fact that the State College of Washington won the very first Rose Bowl game back in 1916. We just don’t mention the fact that the Cougars haven’t won a Rose Bowl game since.

To Cougar Nation, the Chicago Cubs are upstarts when it comes to the art of “Wait ’til next year.”

So here we are, pulling for a team that’s won three straight conference games for the first time since 2003 and looking forward to a Halloween Night game in Martin Stadium that will be on national television.

We have a young quarterback who has won the Pac-12 Player of the Week honor three times – and who has only started 10 games in his entire college career.

There have been growing pains, yes. There have always been growing pains with Washington State football – the kind of growing pains that can make a scream from Butch the mascot sound like a stage whisper. But for the first time this season, we’ve seen significant, weekly growth.

The Cougars won at Oregon against a team that featured a roster full of players who fought for the National Championship back in January. They beat Oregon State and went on the road to beat Arizona.

So. Saturday’s game is with No. 8 Stanford.

No predictions.

This time let’s just ring the doorbell, say “Trick of Treat” and see what we get.

Steve Christilaw can be reached at steve.christilaw@gmail.com.