If nothing else is accomplished Saturday in Pullman, where the 1-10 Washington State Cougars and 0-10 Washington Huskies face each other in the most desolate Apple Cup matchup in the history of the rivalry, at least the fans can party like it’s 1969.

The parallels are eerie:

A Washington team that hasn’t won a game in more than a year?

Check.

A Washington State team down to its third-string quarterback?

Check.

A Huskies nonconference schedule packed with traditional college football heavyweights?

Check.

A Cougars coach who enjoyed success at an NCAA Division II school before relocating to Pullman, where his predecessor left the program with few players capable of competing in a major conference?

Check.

The sense that better days await as soon as the pigskin is replaced by a round, orange-brownish ball?

Check.

“University of Washington fans, after suffering through a long football season, can be pardoned for looking ahead to basketball,” News Tribune sports editor Earl Luebker wrote on Nov. 22, 1969, the day the world little noticed, nor would long remember, an exercise in futility between the 1-8 Cougars and the 0-9 Huskies.

And yet as bleak as 2008 has turned out to be for the Sleeping Dawgs, Tyrone Willingham is overseeing a camp fire marshmallow roast compared to the racial strife that gripped the Huskies 39 years ago.

Tensions reached a boiling point in late October when coach Jim Owens called a team meeting on the Husky Stadium field and demanded that each of his 80 players make a pledge of loyalty. It was Owens’ determination that four of the Huskies’ black players – Ralph Bayard, Greg Alex, Lamar Mills and Harvey Blanks – “lacked total dedication to the Washington football program.”

They were suspended.

The fallout from the coach’s bombshell decision turned out to be both immediate and long-lasting: The nine black players who remained on the team boycotted a Nov. 1 trip to UCLA, and through the boycott participants were reinstated, as were three of the four players originally suspended – Blanks was made the exception – assistant coach Carver Gayton, the only black assistant on Owens’ staff, submitted his resignation.

Racial unrest was pervasive throughout college football in 1969. At Wyoming, 14 players were suspended for participating in a campus demonstration. At Indiana, 10 players were suspended for missing two consecutive practice sessions. In the spring of ’69, the football programs at Iowa and Oregon State became polarized by racial divisions.

“There isn’t a place in the country where black athletes have as many things available to them as whites,” Penn State coach Joe Paterno told The Associated Press in 1969. “It’s a great matter of debate on how to make things better. Each school has to solve the problem on its own with pressures from as much as 2,000 miles away.”

Given the profound distractions facing the Huskies, it’s no wonder football became less a game for them than a chore.

Owens’ 1967 team had been ranked as high as No. 15 in a Sports Illustrated preseason issue, but those Huskies finished a disappointing 5-5, foreshadowing the slide that culminated with the crash of ’69.

At Washington State, meanwhile, second-year coach Jim Sweeney inherited a roster so bereft of ability and depth – any of this sound familiar, Paul Wulff? – that he was forced to move starting quarterback Chuck Hawthorne to the defensive backfield.

Hawthorne’s replacement, Jack Wigmore, was lost to a knee injury, putting the job in the hands of Rich Olson.

A quick study who went on to become a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator – the position he now holds at Arizona State – Olson in 1969 found himself in a chess match with too many missing pieces.

After edging Illinois in the opener, WSU dropped its next eight games by an average score of 36-13.

Washington in 1969 relied on an option-based ground game, and Sweeney fashioned a nine-man front to stop fullback Bo Cornell, who’d gained 149 yards in a surprisingly competitive defeat to Southern California the previous Saturday.

With only two defenders behind the line, Huskies quarterback Gene Willis connected with Bayard for a 11-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter, then followed that up with a 61-yard scoring strike to Bayard before halftime.

“We put all our frustration and anger into that game,” Bayard, who went on to receive two degrees from UW and later served his alma mater as the athletic department’s director of compliance, recalled for the Washington Alumni Magazine.

It was over early. Leading 28-7 at the half, the Huskies went on to win, 30-21. Willis went 5-of-9 for 155 yards – eye-popping stats for a guy who’d completed only 28 passes before the WSU game. A junior from Ashland, Ore., he figured to have dibs on the quarterback job in 1970, but he lost it to another kid from Ashland, Sonny Sixkiller.

Behind Sixkiller, the 1970 Huskies rebounded to go 6-4 – and could’ve gone to the Rose Bowl if not for a 29-22 defeat at Stanford. But racial issues provoked by the 1969 suspensions made for a tenuous peace.

In 2003, Owens came back to Washington for the homecoming game and apologized to the players whose loyalty he questioned.

The healing was complete.

Thirty-nine years after their troubled season was concluded by a lone victory, the 1969 Huskies are putting pressure on their 2008 counterparts: No UW team since 1890 has gone winless.

“Man, this feels good,” senior co-captain Ken Ballenger said after beating the Cougars. “It was a long time coming. Now that the guys know how it feels to win, maybe they’ll start doing it.”

John McGrath: 253-597-8742; ext. 6154

john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com

1-21 Combined record this year for Washington State (1-10) and Wash-ington (0-10)

64 Wins for the Huskies against the Cougars

30 Wins for the Cougars against the Huskies

5 Ties between the Huskies and Cougars

32-13 Huskies’ record in Apple Cup (from 1934-61, the winner received the Governor’s Trophy)

8-5 Huskies’ record in Martin Stadium

2,711 Career receiving yards for WSU receiver Brandon Gibson from Puyallup, the most in Cougars history

8.6 Average tackles per game for UW linebacker Mason Foster, best in the Pacific-10 Conference

40-14 Average points allowed and scored by the Huskies this season

50-14 Average points allowed and scored by the Cougars this season

8 Number of times the Huskies have lost by 20 or more points this season

7 Number of times the Cougars have allowed 45 or more points this season