Apple Cup | Purple or Crimson?

Color-coordinated armies of purple and crimson will converge on Husky Stadium on Saturday for the 100th chapter of an athletic event named after a fruit.

The Apple Cup is the annual football showdown between Washington and Washington State. It is an intense rivalry that usually has a good-natured edge.

It is a battle of West vs. East, establishment university vs. land-grant school, urban mega-university vs. rural institution and dogs vs. cats.

The Apple Cup is the only sporting event in the state where grade-school children are told by teachers to pick sides before the game and wear purple or crimson to class.

It is a game that has ended some years in fans rioting, and most years with players staying on the field to chat with friends on the other team and bask in being part of something special.

The game is between the state's two largest schools, and a newcomer to the state has to almost live with a Sasquatch not to quickly meet people with ties to the universities. This is a week when identification is easier because crimson and purple garments come out of closets. In some circles, the marriage between a Husky and a Cougar is called a "mixed marriage."

Washington leads the series 64-29-6 and that forms much of the Cougars' underdog mentality.

The Huskies have had winning streaks of four, five, six and, on two occasions, eight games. The last significant UW streak was a six-game run snapped with the Cougars' victory of 2004.

The Cougars never have won three Apple Cups in a row and blew the chance to do so last year when they lost 35-32 in Pullman.

One undisputed fact about the rivalry is that the animosity of Cougars fans toward the Huskies is much stronger than vice versa.

The tone of anti-UW fervor by WSU diehards is found in the title of Will Blythe's book about the North Carolina-Duke basketball rivalry: "To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever."

"I hate the Huskies. I would rather have an infectious disease than go to the UW," WSU student-body president Steve Wymer declared in 2000.

A favorite Cougars description of the UW and its fans is "arrogant."

Dr. Stan Cole, a retired Seattle veterinarian and WSU alumnus, delights in carrying around a 1997 Seattle newspaper clipping with a headline that says, "UW perceived as arrogant, public image survey shows."

"They spent $60,000 to learn what any Cougar could have told them," Cole said last Saturday with a big smile.

Indeed, the attitude of many Huskies fans amounts to this: "We are the University of Washington and you happen to be a university in Washington." Pour a drink or two in an obnoxious Huskies fan and prepare to hear about the UW's tougher entrance requirements, larger size, Nobel Prize winners and the medical and law schools being on the UW campus and not in Pullman.

Cougars students and alumni, thousands of whom chose WSU over the UW because they wanted a college experience in a college town away from home, are quick to talk about how their school is a true campus community without commuters. Both schools can do a drumroll of famous alumni.

Huskies fans for decades have made fun of WSU as a rural outpost. Bob Burks, a Lynden lawyer who has collected more than 30,000 newspaper clippings about WSU football, recalls a Seattle newspaper proclaiming in a 1912 headline, "Pullman farmers come to town today."

Part of the charm of college rivalry games is that they are compelling even if the teams have bad records, which is the case this year with both entering with 4-7 marks.

Beating Washington, even if the Huskies are having a down year, guarantees a Cougars team a measure of enshrinement.

"There are four important stages in your life. You're born, you play the Huskies, you get married and you die," said WSU guard Dan Lynch in 1984 in probably the most famous Apple Cup quotation.

Former WSU coach Jim Walden once said, "Nothing in my job, not the Rose Bowls, not the Holiday Bowls, nothing is more important than beating the University of Washington."

The first Apple Cup was played in 1900 and was a 5-5 tie in muddy Seattle conditions.

"Right from the start, weather and officiating headed the list of complaints. To this day, nothing has changed," Richard B. Fry wrote in his book "The Crimson and the Gray, 100 Years with the WSU Cougars."

On the cover of Fry's 1989 book is a photo of WSU's Shawn Landrum blocking a punt in the 1988 Cougars triumph in the Apple Cup. The choice of cover demonstrates the unabashed glee that Cougars take in beating Washington.

By contrast, the cover of the 2001 book "The Glory of Washington" by Jim Daves and W. Thomas Porter has a collage of Huskies equipment, balls and uniforms from various sports.

It is a tradition for the governor to present the Apple Cup trophy, which actually isn't a cup. And the game has been called the Apple Cup only since 1962.

Gov. Christine Gregoire (UW '69) said this week, "As governor, and a sports fan, I can't imagine anything more enjoyable than the intense competition between the Cougs and the Dawgs."

The game is such a major event on the state's athletic landscape that Boeing became the official sponsor this year.

In Fry's opinion, the decision that catapulted the Apple Cup to the can't-miss-the-game status it now enjoys was the move to play the even-year games in Pullman rather than Spokane starting in 1982. The game had been played in Spokane from 1956 to 1980, and Walden was instrumental in getting it moved to back to Pullman.

The Cougars capitalized on the home venue, pulling one of the biggest upsets in the series by beating the Huskies 24-20. That set off a wild celebration that included tossing the goalposts into the Palouse River.

"That 1982 upset energized the series and brought casual fans back into it," said Barry Bolton, senior editor of Cougfan.com. "You were either a Cougar or a Husky. ... Getting the game moved back to campus is one of Walden's most important accomplishments."

Walden said he considers getting the game moved, which required stadium upgrades, his proudest moment.

"They had beaten us eight years in a row and to a lot of people, even Cougar fans, it wasn't a rivalry," Walden said. "But then we won three of four and it's been a good rivalry since then."

Former Huskies coach Don James calls the 1982 loss "the most disappointing of my coaching career of 38 years."

James said moving the game back to Pullman made perfect sense for WSU.

"I thought it was stupid on their part to think about going to Spokane all those years," he said. "I never could understand that. Why give an advantage away, why give a home game away? I think my athletic directors, Joe Kearney and Mike Lude, never would have fallen for that."

Chuck Nelson, the Huskies kicker whose missed 33-yard field goal prevented the Huskies from taking a 23-21 late-game lead in 1982, recalled that "the atmosphere was significantly different than it had been at the Spokane games."

"That was the first time for any of us in Martin Stadium," said Nelson, whose missed kick stopped his then-NCAA record streak at 30. "There was certainly a lot more energy there than there had been in the games up in Joe Albi [the Spokane stadium]."

The loss prevented the Huskies from going to the Rose Bowl for a third straight year. Cougars fans rejoiced.

They hope to celebrate again Saturday.

Craig Smith: 206-464-8279 or csmith@seattletimes.com