The Apple Cup (in September?) just doesn’t feel the same for WSU or UW

I winced when I saw the score.

North Texas 42, Washington State 3.

Then I realized it was HALFTIME.

I should have at least chuckled then. Three years ago, I certainly would have. I’m a UW alum, after all, and back when I was still hosting a radio show at 710 ESPN Seattle, I once answered a question about the Cougs with 20 seconds of uninterrupted, unmitigated laughter. That was 2015, following the Huskies’ 35-point victory over the Cougs.

Ten years later, the Apple Cup is being played in September, and I’m having a very hard time finding anything amusing about Washington State’s 49-point loss in something called Denton, Texas.

I feel bad for what has happened to the Cougs. The only reason I’m hesitant to say this is because I know how condescending that sounds. The Cougs don’t want sympathy from me or any other Husky. They want to beat us, and maybe they will on Saturday just like they did a year ago in Seattle. If that happens there will be a small part of me that feels my school deserves it for having left Washington State behind.

I don’t think there’s much chance of that happening, though. The Cougs may be 2-1, but that includes a win they squeaked out against Idaho. I fear the Great Reshuffling of college football has hollowed out the Cougars, and while I’m not going to tell you how to feel about this fact, I will tell you how I feel: sad.

I know my school faced a difficult decision when the Pac-12 failed to secure a TV contract following the dead-of-night departure by USC and UCLA. Washington didn’t want to leave Washington State. It did, though, and going back to Pullman this weekend feels an awful lot like driving a new car over to your ex’s house when you know they’ve been clipping coupons to buy groceries. I suppose I could gloat about the Cougs’ lack of resources, but that would make me like all those Oregon fans who revel in Phil Knight’s generosity and call other schools broke. This mentality is what I’ve come to loathe most about college football in its current form.

It’s more of a pyramid scheme now. The Big Ten and the SEC are the top tier, the top teams in those conferences throwing around outsized weight. The fans in those conferences point to TV ratings and NIL budgets as proof of how much they matter, and while presence of class divisions in college football is certainly not new, the importance of money has never been this transparent. How much do you have to “spend” on players? What kind of facilities can your school afford to build? There’s increasing pressure on alumni and fans: If you want your program to compete at the highest level, you need to give it the money to do so.

As much as we claim to love underdogs, it feels like Washington State has been left to wither. The Cougs have seen an athletic director (Pat Chun) defect to Washington and a head football coach (Jake Dickert) go to Wake Forest. One quarterback (Cam Ward) transferred to Miami where he became a Heisman Trophy finalist, another (John Mateer) to Oklahoma where he’s currently the starter for the undefeated Sooners.

This is the cost of college football’s reorganization.

A proud program that was once a card-carrying member in one of the country’s premier conferences, a school that had produced top-five draft picks and been to Rose Bowls, now looks more like a feeder program. The Cougs scuffled to beat Idaho at home in this year’s season opener. A win over San Diego State was encouraging. Then the Cougs got torched by North Texas. Their coach wouldn’t even announce his starting long-snapper before the first game and that defense looked both small and slow last Saturday.

I’m not sure if those jokes about using a goalpost to keep Cougars out of your yard were ever funny, but they seem unnecessary and kind of mean now.

It’s not like Washington’s on Easy Street, either. The Huskies are getting the Junior Kid’s Meal version of the Big Ten’s broadcasting contract, and coach Jedd Fisch has been clear about his belief that Washington needs to upgrade its facilities, namely a grass practice field and a “refresh” of Husky Stadium itself. Fisch deserves credit for contributing $1 million of his own money to the athletic department’s fund-raising campaign. He has a history of hopping jobs, though. He also attended Florida, whose football team is 1-2, and while I don’t assume that Fisch is going to leave Washington, I’m not sure how long he’ll stay, either.

What I do know is that if he does leave, it will be hard to criticize him for looking out for his own best interest.

That’s what Washington did two years ago when it left for the Big Ten. That’s just the way college football works now and for all the time and energy television networks have spent polishing up the current product, the way I feel about the Apple Cup tells me that we’ve lost something meaningful in the whole transaction.

Danny O’Neil was born in Oregon, the son of a logger, but had the good sense to attend college in Washington. He’s covered Seattle sports for 20 years, writing for two newspapers, one glossy magazine and hosting a daily radio show for eight years on KIRO 710 AM. You can subscribe to his free newsletter and find his other work at dannyoneil.com.

This story was originally published September 17, 2025 at 11:52 AM.