Analysis: Apple Cup finally features some significant stakes

The Apple Cup holds an odd place among Pac-12 rivalry games, rarely carrying significant stakes and rarely producing memorable moments.

USC and UCLA offered what legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson calls The Game of the Century with its 1967 edition. The Civil War went from the Toilet Bowl in 1983 to deciding a spot in the Rose Bowl in 2009. Cal and Stanford showed everyone what happens when you combine laterals with a trombone player. Even the 2014 Territorial Cup ended up as an elimination game to decide the Pac-12 South and a spot in a New Year’s Six bowl.

That all changes Friday when No. 6 Washington and No. 23 Washington State face off in the most significant and monumental Apple Cup ever played. The winner advances to the Pac-12 title game, and the Huskies have aspirations of making the College Football Playoff. This is only the sixth meeting all time where both teams are ranked, and the first since 2001, when Washington denied the Cougars a share of the conference title.

There just haven’t been enough winner-take-all affairs, a staple for decades of the City Championship between the Trojans and Bruins. When Washington was a powerhouse under Don James, fortunes in Pullman were decidedly downtrodden. When Mike Price had Washington State at the top of the conference in the early 2000s, malaise was setting in under Rick Neuheisel across the state. The programs never had sustained simultaneous success to create big-stakes Apple Cups of the sort Martin Stadium hosts the day after Thanksgiving.

Now there's a chance for that to happen. No one doubts Washington can return to preeminence under Chris Petersen, as it's only taken three seasons for the former Boise State coach to put his plan in place and have the Huskies pushing for top honors. The question is whether Mike Leach can make Washington State a consistent winner to have both teams playing for division, conference, or national titles.

Leach seems to have tempered his approach to make that happen, relying more on the running game and defense to compensate for adjustments Pac-12 teams have made against his Air Raid system. (Whether Petersen’s Washington is prepared to do the same is not entirely clear, having faced Luke Falk in just his third start in 2014 and an overmatched Peyton Bender last season when Falk was concussed in his first two tastes of the rivalry game.)

This kind of season for Washington State is more likely the exception than the rule under Leach, based on his time with the Red Raiders. Producing reliably bowl-bound teams with the occasional division contender every four or five years would seem to be a reasonable expectation.

With that in mind, enjoy this year’s Apple Cup. These kinds of stakes haven’t come along too often and probably won’t going forward.