Week 4, Pt 2: Party on the Palouse
Go Cougs! Say it with me, Go. Cougs.
You’re smiling, aren’t you? You didn’t expect it, but these are the most entertaining two words to say aloud in the entire Pac-12, and that’s kinda how the whole experience in Pullman is. You’ve probably never thought that much about it. When you see Martin Stadium on TV, it appears more reminiscent of Friday Night Lights than big-time college football. But I guarantee you, if you’re ever lucky enough to make the trip to Pullman, from the time you hit the small town with Cougs flags gracing every light pole until the time you find yourself driving off into the night with nothing but the red taillights of fellow gameday go-ers ahead of you, you will have an absolute blast. It is impossible not to.
Cougar gameday is a giant party. There’s no other way to put it. From the general parking lots looking over the border to the Idaho wilderness to the impressive RV tailgates to can’t-miss bars up on the hill to the amazing organized events in the buildings surrounding the stadium, Cougar gameday is focused on fun.
And it makes sense; because when you’ve played 117 seasons of college football and only been to 12 total bowl games, you better at least be able to enjoy the moments surrounding the game. For comparison, USC, Stanford, Washington, and UCLA have been all been to at least 12 Rose Bowls. But you know what those schools don’t have? The Coug. Or Butch. Or a community of fans that have ventured in from across an entire half of a state.
The Cougs aren’t the biggest game in town. They are the only game in town. This is apparent as soon as you begin venturing around the lots and meeting tailgaters who have driven in from multiple hours away. But even Cougs who have ventured far off from eastern Washington to other parts of the world, who have plenty of other games between their new residences and Martin Stadium, go out of their way to make the trip back to the Palouse each season, because while Washington State’s history may lack an abundance of winning seasons, there is certainly no shortage of tradition or fun filling Cougar Saturdays in the fall.
The Drive
Pullman, Washington is not an easy place to get to. It’s the only Pac-12 school that is located more than 2 hours from a major city (sorry Spokane). And while you can jump on a turbo plane and hop over from Seattle to the tiny airport located just 10 minutes from the Cougs' stadium, the flight is surprisingly expensive and to fly in almost feels like cheating, as you’d miss out on the appealing, vacant countryside separating WSU from their rival across the state.
Plus, since my epic journey through the Pac-12 is taking me out of town for nearly every Saturday this fall, I’ve been owing Mrs. Saturday a romantic weekend getaway; and what California girl could ever turn down driving 5 hours across Washington to watch a football game in approximately -40 degree weather?
After the reaction of everyone we told of our plan to drive across the state of Washington on Saturday morning, we didn’t have the highest expectations for the drive, but it turns out that the drive from Seattle to Pullman is rather picturesque. The road across Washington begins lined with towering trees, but as you chase the mountains off in the distance, the trees eventually give way to farmland and the mountains turn into mounds of hay. It’s truly an insightful way to see how things change between the urban and suburban Homeland of the Huskies and good ol’ Cougar Country.
While it’s not as if each car we pass east of Mount Rainier is flying a Cougs flag out every window, the road to the Palouse begins to be filled with subtle hints that you’re now in Cougs country starting about 150 miles outside of Pullman. Slowly, the WSU license plate frames begin to appear. Then, long farm buildings painted crimson and white, visible from miles away, begin popping up along the side of the road. Finally, you know you’ve made it when the highway starts taking you through the main drag of small towns and the local billboards all begin to have the same two words on display: Go Cougs.
Editor's Note: With great respect for the very serious Wazzou v. Wazzu debate, we're going with Wazzou here and making no apologies.
Editor's Update: WSU Twitter has decreed: It's WAZZU.
The RV Lot
From what I understand, tailgating hasn’t always been a huge part of Cougar gamedays. In fact, alcohol used to be completely prohibited on the land-grant university’s campus, which seems like cruel and unusual punishment when you consider that last season was only WAZZU’s 13th winning season of the last 40 years. Thankfully, gameday on the Palouse no longer requires sneaking your beverages around in brown paper bags.
We started our pregame exploration in one of the RV lots located just a wide receiver screen away from Martin Stadium’s gates. Now, it’s not as if this is the first time on the 13 Saturdays tour that we’ve come across RVs that serve as tremendous tailgating vehicles, but the RV lot outside Martin Stadium isn’t quite like any other. The entire large lot is only for RVs and every RV is decked out with Crimson pride. From the paint jobs, to license plates, to signage and memorabilia in the windows, it’s clear you are in surrounded by die-hards on every side of you.
The RV lot sure seems like one big family. We can’t spend more than 2 minutes talking to one tailgater without a friend from across the lot coming over for a high-five or a hug. One of the groups we met started out as 5 different crews of tailgaters, but now take over an entire end of the lot. They always get to the game about 24 hours before the tailgate starts, and thanks to this year’s Apple Cup falling on the Friday after Thanksgiving, that means they’ll be enjoying Turkey Day with their Coug family in Lot #1 and after seeing today’s menu, I can only imagine the feast it will be.
On the menu throughout Pullman today: duck. Lots of duck. A whole season’s worth, in fact. You see, the meals served up at WAZZU tailgates aren’t the result of successful trips to whole foods. As the grillmaster proudly boasts to me, every other year, duckhunting becomes a little more enjoyable, because you know that duck you hit will be part of your gameday experience when Oregon comes to Pullman. So it is with quite the grin on his face that this grillmaster gets the coals turning while directing us to go check out what a season’s worth of duck looks like when wrapped in bacon and prepared for gameday grilling. We follow his directions and I’m starting to feel pretty damn certain we chose the most delicious Saturday for a visit to the Palouse.
While the grillmaster focuses on his duck, the rest of the tailgate erupts into “oohs” and “ahs” and “you’ve got to be freaking kidding me!” as Georgia takes the lead from Tennessee on an answered prayer with 30 seconds to go, only to then lose to Tennessee when the Vols come down with a hail mary about 2 minutes of real time later. College football is full of terrific endings, and they are surely fun to watch from your couch, and it’s definitely enjoyable watching this craziness break out in a sports bar, but anyone who tells you that you can’t go to the game AND enjoy these moments, is tailgating all wrong.
The late-game heroics from Athens spark a conversation that is probably had roughly 100,000 times a season in the greater Pullman area: “You see GameDay this mornin’?” “Of course I did. What kind of question is that.” “Ol’ Crimson looked good.” Then both men laugh and move on to discussing whether the Cougs have any chance at stopping Royce Freeman or if they might as well just start hoping the Cougs’ offense can put up 60.
There are 128 FBS Division 1 football teams, but it's hard to believe any one of those 127 other schools has as great a portion of their fans who start their Saturday’s by flipping on ESPN to catch College GameDay. For every College GameDay broadcast since Week 7 of 2003, Cougar fans have been able to turn on GameDay and know that regardless of whether college football’s premier pregame show was being filmed in Clemson, South Carolina, Madison, Wisconsin, Eugene, Oregon, or anywhere in between, Washington State would be well represented. Each week a different member of Cougar Nation is tasked with visiting the GameDay location for the week, staking out a prime spot behind the set, and waving Ol’ Crimson high and proud for the rest of the country to see.
While this started out as a simple ploy to get GameDay to pay a visit to Pullman, it’s pretty clear that this is now a huge point of pride for Cougs worldwide. Yes, worldwide. We met one tailgater who had flown back from Shanghai for the game, who logs-on to her computer just after midnight in Shanghai every Saturday night just to check-in on Ol’ Crimson and be filled with that special moment of pride, even while a world away from gameday on the Palouse.
Valhalla & The Coug
While sailgating in Seattle on Friday, I met a proud Coug (who for better or worse, married into a Husky family) who was adamant that a true WAZZU GameDay is not complete without trips to The Coug and Valhalla. I didn’t need to be told anymore; there’s a place called The Coug in Pullman. Clearly, this is one of those obvious must-dos of life. You go to Paris, you check out the Eifel Tower; you go to Rome, you walk around the Colosseum; you go to Pullman, you get a drink at the Coug.
The Coug was everything I hoped it’d be and more. Think of your favorite college bar, cut it down in size by 70%, cover every centimeter of the walls with the jokes and messages that seem hilarious when your 19 years old and 3 pitchers deep, and before you wake up from this daydream, fill this tiny bar with the sweet, synchronous smells of grease, yeast, and 3-day old Natty Light. It is fantastic.
Valhalla may be a little more upscale, but just as fun and an excellent place to spend some time before the game. Traditionally, I’d get on some high horse and rave about how gameday is meant to be experienced standing in the shadow of the stadium, staying warm by your own grill, and telling tales of the days when Ryan Leaf was “absolutely” going to be a better NFL QB than Peyton Manning. But, when the bars are a 5-minute stumble from your seats, packed with fellow game-goers, $3 beers, and country hit after country hit, I can see how it’d be hard to leave before some cat named Butch hops on his ATV and red fireworks shoot off signaling gametime.
The CUB, Cougville, and the Fieldhouse
If the college bars up on the hill don’t suit your fancy, there are still a few other fantastic spots to gear up for the Cougs game. If you’re in search of a cleaner, dare I say more sophisticated way to prep for kickoff, you can stop by the CUB (the student union building), where there is a great setup with TVs and carving stations, and even a view onto the field where surely the most popular kids on campus are already inside the stadium playing Guitar Hero on the jumbotron two hours prior to kickoff.
If the CUB is a little classier than your preference for pregame festivities, there are two more places you can enjoy the pleasures of tailgating without having to worry about cleaning and packing all your things before kickoff. For the bravest of parents who enjoy the chill of “pleasant” Pullman evenings as the sun goes down, Cougville appears to be some sort of kids activity zone/beer garden, which actually seems like a fairly genius idea, so long as it’s not open on the day Ryan Leaf and the 1997 Rose Bowl team are invited back to be honored. (Harsh, I know, but I grew up with Chargers season tickets and Ryan Leaf ruined my childhood.) And if working up your frostbite capacity isn’t of interest, WSU opens up a fieldhouse next to the stadium where you can purchase beer and food and hangout with a few thousand fellow fans before the game.
The fieldhouse is a pretty awesome concept. The place was packed, had Pullman’s finest Subway, Pizza Hut, and sausages for purchase, and a surprisingly wide variety of beers to choose from. As we make our way around the room, it’s clear that despite the rocky opener to the season, Coug fans are feeling some genuine optimism that this year’s team could still be a special squad. However, when you’ve been through what WAZZU fans have been through, I couldn’t blame one lady for telling me, “I just hope the Coug isn’t filled with disappointed fans who left during the third quarter.”
This contraption is a pop-up port-o-potty that the Ducks had about as difficult a time figuring out as Wazzou's run game.
Highlights from The Game
Martin Stadium may be the smallest in the conference, but when you pack every 33,000 fans in that intimate environment, you absolutely feel the buzz of a big game in the air. And the stadium certainly wasn’t lacking for theatrics. While some parts of the stadium may indeed remind you of those high school Friday nights, the Cougs are not entering the field by tearing down some homemade poster the cheerleaders made after the pep rally, but announce their presence with red flames shooting high into the sky as the team appears storming out of a cloud of smoke led by… a uniformed cat on a lawnmower?
(Ok, what is it with sending your mascot out on a motor vehicle? When did this become a part of the Pac-12 charter? The Oregon Duck comes out on a motorcycle, the Utah Owl comes out on a motorcycle, and now Butch T. Cougar, is leading the Cougs into battle on a 3 wheeler or an ATV or something? I can’t even google the answer.)
In all reality, Butch is actually a pretty great mascot. Mrs. Saturday and I sat in the first row for this game which had a predictably less than ideal vantage point for watching some of the game action, but the best seat in the house for mascot observations, which given the discrepancy in performances between the Ducks and THE DUCK actually turned out pretty well for us. I’m still convinced the Duck is the mascot powerhouse in the conference, but between his crowd surfing and one-armed pushups, Butch put up a solid argument to be included the playoff field.
As for the game itself, I think it’s best summed up by this story: Midway through the 3rd quarter, I went to the bathroom, and like many stadiums, they have the radio call of the game playing in the bathroom. As the Ducks prepared to take the field after yet another Cougs rushing TD, the radio announcer put together this incredible analysis after watching 40 minutes of Dakota Prukop (Oregon’s QB): “You know, he can do pretty much everything well other than drop back and throw downfield.” Now, I’m no member of the Nick Saban coaching tree, but from my understanding, throwing downfield is pretty much a requisite for playing quarterback. I’m thinking maybe Oregon should try to find someone that can do that between now and whenever they want to return to being a relevant football program.
Other memorable quotes courtesy from the characters in the first few rows of Martin Stadium:
“Get her a jersey!” - The Oregon fan beside me. In reference to Wazzou’s baton girl who ran a 4.4 second 40-yard dash to get to midfield and lead the band out on the field for their performances.
“That’s the best dance team there is, son. You know why? Farmer’s daughters. You can travel the whole world, but you can’t do better than a farmer’s daughter.” - The Cougs fan behind me. I cannot verify the truth of any element of this Coug’s claims, but I will say the Wazzou dance team certainly looked friendly.
“6 rushing touchdowns?!? Just call us ‘Bama for now on.” - A Cougs fan, summing up the shock that certainly hit every east coast writer that woke up to see a Mike Leach squad RAN for 6 touchdowns.
“Go! Cougs! Go! Cougs! Go! Cougs!” - 33,000 new friends filled with hope that this is just the first page of a memorable Pac-12 novel of a season.
And finally, one courtesy of Mrs. Saturday after I made another wrong turn while trying to find our way to Spokane at 2am in the morning, “Oh well. Go Cougs.” Yup, Pullman sure left an impression.
