True-blue Washington State football fans serve up fun at Albi Stadium

Just about 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon the trailers started rolling in.

They claimed their favorite spots on the lawns just outside the Albi Stadium. Their owners quickly set up lawn chairs, barbecues, fire pits and games. The Cougars fans raised their Washington State flags, cracked open beers and cranked up the music.

They laughed and enjoyed the chance to meet new friends, other WSU alumni, some current students and some who have just always rooted for the Cougs.

The crew of tailgaters might have parked the trailers and pitched up tents a day early to the big Crimson and Gray Game that would take place the following afternoon, but those fans couldn’t wait to get the party started. It was, after all, one of the only times Spokane could actually tailgate in Spokane.

Somewhere in the middle of the party was Jim Burke’s giant pig cooking on grill, something he and his brothers have served up each year at Albi.

Burke made sure to get a pig big enough to feed all of his brothers this year. He was expecting hundreds of them – fraternity brothers, that is – to show up on Saturday to feast on his pig. And to watch a football game too, of course.

“I’ve been cooking pigs for a long time. So I thought, ‘Well, let’s cook a pig and bring the boys up to Spokane,’ ” Burke said.

Meeting up for a pig feast and game every April has become a tradition for WSU’s Sigma Nu fraternity. Burke, who graduated from WSU in 1987, started the annual gathering of the fraternity’s alumni and active members five years ago when the football team took its inaugural trip up north for the in-house scrimmage game.

This year’s turnout for the Sigma Nu members was the largest it has been since the gathering began. On Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, several active members and alumni of the fraternity traveled from Pullman to join their brothers in Spokane who graduated from WSU years ago.

Burke said he often uses the annual reunion to reach out to high school kids at the game who will be attending WSU and could use some convincing to join the Sigma Nu brothers.

Clayton Simundson, who was a freshman in the fraternity when the get-together started years ago, said the reunion at Albi is also an opportunity for the younger brothers to connect with the older ones who helped create their fraternity’s history.

“We have all these scrapbooks in our alumni room, so as you flip through them you have pictures of Jim (Burke) with his to-be wife at the time,” Simundson said. “So when all these guys get to come up here and get to meet the man … himself, they just really get to experience how deep (the fraternity) runs.”

They also get to experience Burke’s cooked pig – head and all.

“There’s nothing better than pig belly fat,” Burke said.

Of course, he saved the eyeballs for some special guests – the reporters who took an interest in all the stories that seem to bubble up when a band of brotherhood pulls together.

This reporter was offered the first pig’s eye on Friday night.

I took a rain check.