‘It was all talk’: After WSU’s win over Oregon State, consider this series a real rivalry

PULLMAN – When halftime hits at Gesa Field, teams are put on something of a collision course. The path to Washington State’s locker room takes the Cougars from the far sideline to the opposite side of the field. The path to the visitors’ takes the guests across the field too. The Cougs will often cross paths with their opponent, but it’s rarely an eventful sequence.

Unless the visiting team is Oregon State, which WSU dominated in a 32-8 win on Saturday evening, earning win No. 6 and bowl eligibility.

Before the game was final, the teams took their time heading to the locker room for halftime. The Cougs headed to their tunnel. The Beavs beelined for theirs. But it didn’t go very smoothly. Several OSU players stopped to chat with WSU players, who responded in kind. It wasn’t clear what they were saying, but in a matchup of the traditional Pac-12’s only two holdovers, they didn’t look like very friendly interactions.

“They had a lot of choice words for us the first time we played them,” said WSU quarterback Zevi Eckhaus, who scored two touchdowns in this one. “It was all talk, because you see the scoreboard. I guess that makes us the Pac-2 champs, or the Pac-12 champs. I mean, if it’s a tie-breaker, it goes to the point differential, right? So I guess that makes us the Pac-12 champions.

“I think last time, one of their players said this isn’t a rivalry game, they keep winning. Well, we just won, so I guess this is a rivalry game. So to be able to go out there in a rivalry game, last game of the season, our home stadium, dominate them in all three phases. Yeah, it was big for us. It was huge.”

The tenor of this matchup between WSU and OSU has changed in recent years. In the wake of the traditional Pac-12’s implosion in 2023, which left the Cougars and Beavers picking up the pieces from the conference, the two schools seemed to form a bond. They only had each other, the thinking went, and so fans acted accordingly. They made Pac-12 logos with crimson and orange. They rooted for each other’s teams, at least when they weren’t playing each other. Heck, before WSU’s win over OSU in 2023, the mascots rode out onto the field together.

The two programs might always feel some sort of connection. We held the Pac-12 together. We stayed. We’re buddies. But in their two years adrift of a traditional conference setup, they have not played like it. After OSU earned a 10-7 win in the teams’ first clash of the season, a home-and-home series that the schools set up to fill out their 2025 schedules, Beaver safety Jaheim Patterson said this: “They say it’s a rivalry, but a rivalry is if you’re winning and losing, but we’ve been winning every time.”

In the all-time series, WSU owns a 57-49-3 advantage. In the last decade, the teams have met 12 times. The Cougars have won nine of those games.

But no matter the records, the spirit of this game may have changed forever. Think back to last fall, when former WSU coach Jake Dickert said this: “I’ve never gotten into ‘they’re our buddy.’ Oregon State is not our buddy. They would have left us as fast as we would have left them.”

Dickert may have a point. His successor, Jimmy Rogers, now gets a front-row seat. His Cougs will head into their bowl game, into the offseason, with bragging rights.

“With the lack of fans here tonight, it was good to have some meaning behind this game, to be honest with you,” Rogers said. “Our guys were ready. They played with edge. They came out talking. It was really chippy. And anytime a game is chippy, there’s always extra motivation behind it, naturally. So I was happy with the guys, the way they played, the urgency and how they took the field in all three phases.”