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WSU has chance to 'Coug it' right For years, there has been a term to describe Washington State University football. The term is "Coug it" when used as noun or "Couging it" when used as a verb. For years, as the program struggled, it was used in both its forms to describe WSU's penchant for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In 1998, when the Cougs went to the Rose Bowl following the 1997 season, coach Mike Price said that season gave new meaning to the term, and from then on it would mean that the Cougars played their best when it mattered the most. It didn't quite work out that way as the Cougars went into a severe tailspin after their Rose Bowl glory, a spiral that started when Ryan Leaf left to start his disastrous NFL career. Things began to turn around last year when WSU made it to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, where it beat Purdue. Now, at 5-1 overall and 2-0 in the Pacific-10 after beating Southern California in overtime last Saturday, the 12th-ranked Cougars can all but clinch a bowl berth with a win over Stanford. Stanford, which lost its head coach when Tyrone Willingham bolted for Notre Dame, is 1-3, 0-1 in the Pac-10 under Buddy Teevens. After today's game, WSU has a bye and Price has said that quarterback Jason Gesser will spend the full week getting wrinkled in a hot tub to recover from all the bumps and bruises he's received this season. If WSU can get past Stanford, and it's favored to do just that today in the Bay Area, the Cougars will have earned enough wins to nearly guarantee another bowl-game appearance. The only question that will remain is how good the bowl game will be. Basically, a loss to Stanford would be a major step back toward those days when many suggested it was impossible to play consistent Pac-10 football in the hamlet of Pullman. History, of course, indicates that things won't be easy for the Cougs today. Stanford holds a 30-21-1 lead in the series that began in 1936. The Cougs won 45-29 last year at Palo Alto to snap a three-game losing streak to the Cardinal, but Stanford still holds a 17-12 lead at home in the series. So while this might seem like a semi-bye, it's anything but. Price is 3-8 against Stanford. His overall 78-76 record at WSU is much better at home. He's only 35-45 on the road. College football gurus, who know about these things, don't think WSU will have much trouble and has installed the Cougars a 712-point favorite, a factor, no doubt, in the fact that the 2 p.m. game won't be televised. Cougar fans know better than to chalk up a win just yet, even though WSU is 15-3 in its last 18 games, the second-best record in the Pac-10. Oregon is 16-1 since the start of 2001. So will WSU "Coug it" in the negative sense today and lose to an inferior opponent? Or will they "Coug it" by rolling over Stanford and watch next week as they rise up back into the Top 10? Starting linebacker Al Genatone, the former Kamiakin standout, summed it up best last week after the win over USC. "We knew how bad our record was against USC, but this is a new team with new players," Genatone said. "We're only looking ahead." Anyone who assumes that WSU will blow it against Stanford is living in the past. | ||||||||||
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