‘Too Good to Be Through’ unearths UW-WSU Apple Cup rivalry memories
“Too Good to Be Through,” written by former longtime Seattle Times reporter Bud Wither, offers an in-depth look back at the Apple Cup rivalry and makes the case for why it needs to continue. (Photo courtesy Bud Withers)
By Bud Withers Special to The Seattle Times
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from “Too Good to Be Through,” written by former longtime Seattle Times reporter Bud Withers. The book, available now, looks back at the long history of the Apple Cup rivalry and makes the case for why it needs to continue, even in these roiled, realignment times.
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RICK NEUHEISEL CAN TELL YOU about Apple Cup victories, because he never lost any of the four games he coached. And he can tell you about how cold Lake Washington is in late November, because a tradition developed during his four seasons (1999-2003) at the UW: At postgame gatherings after the rivalry finale at his lakefront home on the eastside, guests were encouraged to take the Apple Cup Plunge, a quick dive into the lake, inevitably followed by a sprint to the hot tub.
“When you win,” he said, “the lake seems a lot warmer.”
Naturally, on the nights when the mercury dropped into the 30s, there was some reluctance. And one year, the legion of the recalcitrant included the woman who hired Neuheisel, UW athletic director Barbara Hedges.
As Neuheisel describes it, he was there in his kitchen, along with Hedges and Neal Dempsey, the venture capitalist who had fronted the Dempsey Indoor facility at Washington.
“Neal Dempsey offered Barbara Hedges a gift of $2 million if she would take the Apple Cup Plunge, and she wouldn’t do it,” Neuheisel said. “She said, ‘What would I do with my hair?’ “
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Ah, the stories. Everybody, it seems, has an Apple Cup story — coaches, players, fans. What would the Apple Cup be without its mother lode of recollections, anecdotes and tales that bring to life the goings-on over two patches of artificial turf in Seattle and Pullman?
More than that, there are instances when Huskies helped Cougars and Cougars helped Huskies, when they actually coexisted and flourished, discovering a human being on the other side. Turns out Apple Cup lore is laced not only with enmity, but empathy.
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BROCK HUARD THINKS back on that day occasionally, November 22, 1997, how his senses were at full alert. How Ryan Leaf made his skin crawl, how the trappings of the occasion raised the temperature at Husky Stadium.
There was the Canadian flag waved prominently — the solitary maple leaf — celebrating WSU’s brash quarterback. There were the “jelly rolls,” as Huard called them, around Leaf’s midsection. There was the stark difference between them — Leaf, the bawdy gunslinger known for his off-field insolence; Huard, the God-fearing soldier schooled to do it the “right” way.
“Couldn’t stand him,” Huard said in 2023.
After their NFL careers, their paths diverged sharply. Huard got into radio in Seattle, then television. Leaf got into drugs. He became addicted to opioids, resulting from a wrist injury. For years, there wasn’t an account about Ryan Leaf that didn’t include drugs, burglary, treatment centers, probation violation or prison.
In 2017, Leaf, post-prison, was traveling up the West Coast with his future wife, when Huard invited him to be on his faith-related podcast. That led to Huard giving counsel to Leaf, who was interested in a broadcast career.
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“The dude was super instrumental with my career, with just advice and friendship,” Leaf told me in 2024.
Leaf had some experience on Sirius XM radio. Huard told him to keep the radio gig and above all, be open to working anything offered.
“He said what benefited him most was the daily three-hour radio show,” Leaf said. “There’s never a moment when he’s caught off-guard.”
Huard told Leaf, “If you want to do television for a living, do radio.” It would be good for him — the regularity of radio, the need to generate an opinion, the opportunity to develop a voice. To stay sharp.
The other part of that advice — about work ethic — seemed to resonate. On New Year’s Eve morning, 2023, Leaf’s cellphone buzzed at his Connecticut home. It was Westwood One radio, needing an emergency replacement for Green Bay’s game at Minnesota that evening.
Within a half-hour, Leaf had an Uber driver at his home, hustling him to Kennedy International Airport in New York for a flight to Minneapolis a couple of hours later. He made the game with time to spare, and was rewarded by landing a couple of playoff games.
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Regarding his availability, Leaf says, “Guys aren’t going out of their way to hire a guy that has all the baggage I do — a convicted felon and drug addict. I have to be that much better than everybody else.”
And as for the guy who loathed him so fiercely on that November afternoon in 1997?
“Brock was tremendously helpful to me,” Leaf says. “I also think he’s the best color guy in the business.”
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CHUCK NELSON HAS A confession to make. The former Washington kicker, who later did TV and radio analysis for the Huskies, once wore a Cougar sweatshirt for an entire broadcast.
He did it willfully. It had nothing to do with losing a bet.
Nelson, whose name still dots the UW record book, did radio with Bob Rondeau from 1994 to 2009. He wasn’t around the job long enough to see the WSU press box opened in 2012 as part of a Martin Stadium makeover. To put that upgrade in, say, telephone terms, it was like going from an old party line to an iPhone16.
In their radio days together, Nelson and Rondeau were wise enough to the frequently frigid temperatures of late November on the Palouse that, having flown over from the westside on Friday, they’d make an obligatory stop at Walmart and buy a space heater, and when the game was done, simply leave it in the old press box.
Nelson had learned well. After a five-year career in the NFL, his first Apple Cup in Pullman as a broadcaster was none other than the famous 1992 Snow Bowl. While ABC aired the game live, Nelson teamed with Bud Nameck and former WSU quarterback Clete Casper for Prime Sports Northwest’s replay broadcast in, well, spartan conditions.
“We were literally in a tent on the roof of the pressbox,” Nelson said. “They didn’t have room in the pressbox. They had a space heater for us. I don’t know how my coat didn’t catch on fire. I was backed up to it.”
About an hour before the game, Nelson was so cold he turned to emergency measures. He walked down to Hollingbery Fieldhouse and bought a Christmas present for his older brother Ken, a Cougar. Nelson left the tags on, pulled the sweatshirt over his head and covered up with his coat.
Nobody was the wiser, save perhaps for the football gods, who must have surmised it was OK to endorse WSU’s rollicking 42-23 victory.
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ONCE UPON A TIME, MARIO BAILEY was going to be a Cougar.
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“I was going to Washington State because of coach [Dennis] Erickson,” Bailey told me in a 2023 meetup. “I loved him to death.”
Unfortunately for the Cougars, Bailey’s older brother Victor Greer loved WSU as well. Or at least the hedonistic part of it. Mario describes him as “ … getting in trouble, having a little too much fun out there.”
That was when Mom pulled the reins back in, and Mario Bailey ended up a Husky, where he became an All-American receiver, a key figure on the 1991 UW national champions, and in 1993, a hopeful in the camp of the New York Jets.
There, Bailey came upon cornerback James Hasty, who had played for Washington State under Erickson. Hasty and Bailey each had attended Franklin High School in Seattle. They knew the same streets, knew a lot of the same people. Surely they would be kindred souls in an NFL camp.
“I was looking for him to be more like a mentor,” Bailey said, laughing. “He was the opposite. He was out to totally destroy me.”
At each practice, there was an ample fan turnout. One day, Bailey beat Hasty for a score, thinking it was no big deal. It happens.
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He went to his locker and Hasty was there, saying ominously, “Wait ‘til tomorrow.”
Eventually, Bailey got cut by the Jets. “He called to check on me when I didn’t make the team, and maybe a year or so later, he apologized,” Bailey said.
Decades later, Bailey marveled at Hasty’s raw territorial instinct, saying, “In Seattle, because of that Husky championship, I got a lot of popularity and notoriety in our ‘hood.
“He’s like, ‘Uh-uh.’ I knew who he was, he knew who I was, and he’s coming to get me.”
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FINALLY, FROM THE can-you-top-this file of Coug-Dawg histrionics:
Robbie Tobeck, Drew Bledsoe’s center at WSU and later part of dominant offensive lines under Mike Holmgren with the Seahawks, is an unabashed Husky hater, although he concedes some of it’s for effect. His then-wife once admonished him to call ex-UW NFL teammates and apologize after he said publicly, “I hate ‘em, I don’t like any of those guys.”
Tobeck was a teammate of former Washington offensive lineman Jeff Pahukoa in Atlanta in 1995-96. Their two oldest children — Tobeck’s daughter, Pahukoa’s son — were the same age and as toddlers, played together at each other’s homes.
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That provided Pahukoa the entry point for some memorable mischief at Tobeck’s expense. One day when the little girl was visiting, Pahukoa and his wife dressed her up in Husky gear. They took pictures.
Next, Pahukoa enlisted the help of the Falcons’ equipment manager, who had majored in English at Florida State. That fellow put his literary juices to work.
When Tobeck next entered the team’s locker facility, he kept to routine and went straight to the scale to weigh himself. There, at the head of the scale, he first saw it: A “newspaper” reproduction, with the screaming headline, “Daughter Shuns Birthright, Chooses UW.”
“It looked just like it was out of a newspaper,” Tobeck told me over coffee in 2022. “ ‘My dad really wanted me to go to Washington State, but I wanted an education, so I chose UW.’ And on and on. I walk into the locker room, and the article and pictures are everywhere.
“It was really good work.”
And, no doubt a good lesson for all devout Cougars and Huskies who would consort with the enemy: Stay loose.
Bud Withers.