The City of Seattle’s Relationship With UW & UW Football
Comments
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UW was the biggest deal in town in the late 80s. But Seattle itself never did like big time football. The Seattle Times would write a glowing article about the team in the Sports section with guys like Blaine Newnham. While at the same time the Northwest section would write 2 stories about how Don James was the highest paid public employee and how that was wrong and every time a football player would get a DUI.
Fans used to make UW #1. Seattle never liked them. -
It is interesting that UW football was held to a higher standard of conduct than the Seahawks. I know a big part of that is because of its ties to a publicly funded university, but don’t tell me the Seahawks, Sounders, etc. players don’t pull a lot of the same off field shenanigans that the Husky players do.Alexis said:UW was the biggest deal in town in the late 80s. But Seattle itself never did like big time football. The Seattle Times would write a glowing article about the team in the Sports section with guys like Blaine Newnham. While at the same time the Northwest section would write 2 stories about how Don James was the highest paid public employee and how that was wrong and every time a football player would get a DUI.
Fans used to make UW #1. Seattle never liked them. -
I remember going to a Seahawk game in the 80's when they had risen to average. It was the day after a Husky game. No comparison between the two atmospheres. Husky Stadium was so much more alive.
I never understood why UW AD tries so hard to have a pro atmosphere at Husky Stadium. Well, I do, it pays but it destroyed the game day
When I was young out of town scores were announced over the speaker and there was no video board and we were THANKFUL for it as we walked home uphill in the snow -
Oh come on Race, I bet you would’ve loved to have seen highlights from the Oregon Agricultural Aggie games.RaceBannon said:I remember going to a Seahawk game in the 80's when they had risen to average. It was the day after a Husky game. No comparison between the two atmospheres. Husky Stadium was so much more alive.
I never understood why UW AD tries so hard to have a pro atmosphere at Husky Stadium. Well, I do, it pays but it destroyed the game day
When I was young out of town scores were announced over the speaker and there was no video board and we were THANKFUL for it as we walked home uphill in the snow -
First Husky experience was in 74. Road tripped from EWA with my uncle and his buddies for UCLA. Sat just above the student section.
My 14 year old impressions: Lots of girls, drinking, first time I ever smelled pot...this college thing needs to be explored. My pops was a fan, because he was from Texas, and was very familiar with Owens from when he was at Okie. One of my buddies dads played for 2 years at UW in the late 50's, and he and I were pretty much the only dawg fans in a town of Cuogs.
Many cross-state trips over the years (3-4 per year, beginning in college), we had so much fun before, during, and after the games. People were passionate, knowledgeable, loud, and there for football FIRST, not to get trashed in "The Zone", or on a boat. You got trashed in your seat, watching the game. Post-game to the U district or Pioneer Square. When it was safe to be in either place (or anywhere in Seattle) after dark.
Fast forward, moved to Seattle, season tickets, different vibe now. Less a football game, more an "entertainment experience"...For me, the last remnants of the good old days was the Stanford plungering...we gave up the tix in '19...no Lou Gellerman (RIP), no good band, seizure-inducing graphics / music, students / others leaving at half time...that 'aint Husky football. Never been to a Century Link Hawk game / money grab. It sucks getting old, Time Waits for No One...give me back my Keith Jackson...
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I left out that my Dad’s name is Dave and he went to GRCC. Go Gatorz!dnc said:
My perspective is probably different than most here in that I grew up in a Seahawks family who DNGAF about UW. Dad got me hooked on the Hawks and I adopted UW on my own shortly thereafter. My Dad grew up Mormon and his family hated UW because they refused to play BYU back in the day and he had a little soft spot for the Cougs because he was from Eastern Washington. Thankfully he didn't really GAF about college football in general so he didn't discourage me from pulling for UW he just didn't care, nor did anyone else in my family. To my perspective in that 85-90 era where I first cared about sports the Seahawks were a bigger deal than the Dawgs in the area. I do think the Dawgs were a bigger deal in the early 90s - some kids at my middle school and even a few at my high school wore UW gear. It wasn't rare to see Sonics or even Mariners gear but NOBODY wore Seahawks gear at that point. Myself included.Doog_de_Jour said:On Yella’s Muzak Bored he questioned why members of grunge bands were depressed. Seattle was “way cooler” in the late eighties and early nineties, and UW football was kicking ass.
That got me wondering about Seattle and its relationship to UW and Husky Football during that era. That was a bit before my tim, so I’m curious - was Seattle as enamored with the DWAGS back in the day as it is with theHawksSoundersKraken now?
I don't think it was ever as Husky dominant as it is Seahawk dominant now (at least not in my lifetime) but I'm not there now so maybe it's not as Hawks centric as my impression. -
As an old-time Seattleite that grew up in Montlake my perspective is a little different regarding the Seattle sports scene.
Picture this:
in the 50's the big thing in Seattle was hydro racing ~ the city was NUTS about the rivalry with detroit and the gold cup was the thing that the entire town stopped and watched on the local boats, along the shoreline or on TV. TV was NEW... think about that. The most exciting TV ads were the local dairy ads for cottage cheese because the color guns on the new color tv's were out of alignment and so the cottage cheese ads looked like rainbow-colored product offerings. Cool.
Seattle was a small town that basically stopped at the city limits which was around the 7/11 on aurora that people in here are fond of referring to. Bellevue was a cow town that you needed to plan a day trip to get to because the bridge didn't exist yet. The freeway system through Seattle was just being built.
Seattle was a major league west coast city from a sports perspective in the sense that the PCL baseball league consisted of all of the major west coast teams... LA, SF, San Diego, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC. Throw in the Salt lake city Bees and the Hawaii Islanders and that was the league.
Same with hockey... the Western Hockey league was killer with LA, SF, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC and the local Canucks were a dynamite team. Seattle was definitely a great hockey town and the old ice arena really rocked... Yow, it was exciting to watch the long slap shots from the blue line amidst the smoke and air horns.
UW crew was a really big deal... it was the Dawgs and Cal vs the eastern powers of Harvard and some of the other IVY league schools.
The NFL didn't really exist on the west coast until the 49ers and Rams were introduced on the west coast... so you had your choice of which of those two teams were your local favorite.
So, the college football scene was the only game in town throughout most of the west. West coast football was a regional affair ~ UCLA, USC, Washington and Cal were the teams of note but the big ten and the big 12 were really the teams that mattered nationally. No one really expected the west coast teams to do much from a national perspective until the west coast teams actually started to do something unusual ~ some of the teams started to throw the football, sometimes as much as 20X a game [origins of the so-called West Coast Offense]
Some of the games were televised but until ABC sports started televising national games, football was all about going to the game. The metro league was an important part of the Dawgs recruiting footprint. In those days the Metro league was the best part of the local football scene, and there was a city vs state all-star game at the end of the season that the City team was usually the winner of.
It was one platoon football, the teams were small and the schedule often included luminary offerings ~ Here is the 1957 schedule:
University of Colorado SEP 21 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
MINNESOTA SEP 28 ~ At MINNEAPOLIS AND SAINT PAUL, MINN.
OHIO STATE OCT 5 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
UCLA OCT 12 ~ AT UCLA LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
Stanford OCT 19 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
Oregon State OCT 26 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
University of Southern California NOV 2 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
University of Oregon NOV 9 ~ AT EUGENE, ORE.
University of California NOV 16 ~ AT BERKELEY, CALIF.
Washington State NOV 23 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
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I miss WASHINGTON, dammit!DawgsCanDance said:As an old-time Seattleite that grew up in Montlake my perspective is a little different regarding the Seattle sports scene.
Picture this:
in the 50's the big thing in Seattle was hydro racing ~ the city was NUTS about the rivalry with detroit and the gold cup was the thing that the entire town stopped and watched on the local boats, along the shoreline or on TV. TV was NEW... think about that. The most exciting TV ads were the local dairy ads for cottage cheese because the color guns on the new color tv's were out of alignment and so the cottage cheese ads looked like rainbow-colored product offerings. Cool.
Seattle was a small town that basically stopped at the city limits which was around the 7/11 on aurora that people in here are fond of referring to. Bellevue was a cow town that you needed to plan a day trip to get to because the bridge didn't exist yet. The freeway system through Seattle was just being built.
Seattle was a major league west coast city from a sports perspective in the sense that the PCL baseball league consisted of all of the major west coast teams... LA, SF, San Diego, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC. Throw in the Salt lake city Bees and the Hawaii Islanders and that was the league.
Same with hockey... the Western Hockey league was killer with LA, SF, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC and the local Canucks were a dynamite team. Seattle was definitely a great hockey town and the old ice arena really rocked... Yow, it was exciting to watch the long slap shots from the blue line amidst the smoke and air horns.
UW crew was a really big deal... it was the Dawgs and Cal vs the eastern powers of Harvard and some of the other IVY league schools.
The NFL didn't really exist on the west coast until the 49ers and Rams were introduced on the west coast... so you had your choice of which of those two teams were your local favorite.
So, the college football scene was the only game in town throughout most of the west. West coast football was a regional affair ~ UCLA, USC, Washington and Cal were the teams of note but the big ten and the big 12 were really the teams that mattered nationally. No one really expected the west coast teams to do much from a national perspective until the west coast teams actually started to do something unusual ~ some of the teams started to throw the football, sometimes as much as 20X a game [origins of the so-called West Coast Offense]
Some of the games were televised but until ABC sports started televising national games, football was all about going to the game. The metro league was an important part of the Dawgs recruiting footprint. In those days the Metro league was the best part of the local football scene, and there was a city vs state all-star game at the end of the season that the City team was usually the winner of.
It was one platoon football, the teams were small and the schedule often included luminary offerings ~ Here is the 1957 schedule:
University of Colorado SEP 21 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
MINNESOTA SEP 28 ~ At MINNEAPOLIS AND SAINT PAUL, MINN.
OHIO STATE OCT 5 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
UCLA OCT 12 ~ AT UCLA LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
Stanford OCT 19 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
Oregon State OCT 26 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
University of Southern California NOV 2 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
University of Oregon NOV 9 ~ AT EUGENE, ORE.
University of California NOV 16 ~ AT BERKELEY, CALIF.
Washington State NOV 23 ~ SEATTLE, WASH. -
Very true. But let's not forget that the local rag isn't filled with "journalists" who were San Francisco 49ers or LA Rams in college either (or Broncos or Raiders).Doog_de_Jour said:
It is interesting that UW football was held to a higher standard of conduct than the Seahawks. I know a big part of that is because of its ties to a publicly funded university, but don’t tell me the Seahawks, Sounders, etc. players don’t pull a lot of the same off field shenanigans that the Husky players do.Alexis said:UW was the biggest deal in town in the late 80s. But Seattle itself never did like big time football. The Seattle Times would write a glowing article about the team in the Sports section with guys like Blaine Newnham. While at the same time the Northwest section would write 2 stories about how Don James was the highest paid public employee and how that was wrong and every time a football player would get a DUI.
Fans used to make UW #1. Seattle never liked them. -
This would be such a fucking tits schedule if we had it today. We'd go 6-4 but still...DawgsCanDance said:As an old-time Seattleite that grew up in Montlake my perspective is a little different regarding the Seattle sports scene.
Picture this:
in the 50's the big thing in Seattle was hydro racing ~ the city was NUTS about the rivalry with detroit and the gold cup was the thing that the entire town stopped and watched on the local boats, along the shoreline or on TV. TV was NEW... think about that. The most exciting TV ads were the local dairy ads for cottage cheese because the color guns on the new color tv's were out of alignment and so the cottage cheese ads looked like rainbow-colored product offerings. Cool.
Seattle was a small town that basically stopped at the city limits which was around the 7/11 on aurora that people in here are fond of referring to. Bellevue was a cow town that you needed to plan a day trip to get to because the bridge didn't exist yet. The freeway system through Seattle was just being built.
Seattle was a major league west coast city from a sports perspective in the sense that the PCL baseball league consisted of all of the major west coast teams... LA, SF, San Diego, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC. Throw in the Salt lake city Bees and the Hawaii Islanders and that was the league.
Same with hockey... the Western Hockey league was killer with LA, SF, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC and the local Canucks were a dynamite team. Seattle was definitely a great hockey town and the old ice arena really rocked... Yow, it was exciting to watch the long slap shots from the blue line amidst the smoke and air horns.
UW crew was a really big deal... it was the Dawgs and Cal vs the eastern powers of Harvard and some of the other IVY league schools.
The NFL didn't really exist on the west coast until the 49ers and Rams were introduced on the west coast... so you had your choice of which of those two teams were your local favorite.
So, the college football scene was the only game in town throughout most of the west. West coast football was a regional affair ~ UCLA, USC, Washington and Cal were the teams of note but the big ten and the big 12 were really the teams that mattered nationally. No one really expected the west coast teams to do much from a national perspective until the west coast teams actually started to do something unusual ~ some of the teams started to throw the football, sometimes as much as 20X a game [origins of the so-called West Coast Offense]
Some of the games were televised but until ABC sports started televising national games, football was all about going to the game. The metro league was an important part of the Dawgs recruiting footprint. In those days the Metro league was the best part of the local football scene, and there was a city vs state all-star game at the end of the season that the City team was usually the winner of.
It was one platoon football, the teams were small and the schedule often included luminary offerings ~ Here is the 1957 schedule:
University of Colorado SEP 21 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
MINNESOTA SEP 28 ~ At MINNEAPOLIS AND SAINT PAUL, MINN.
OHIO STATE OCT 5 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
UCLA OCT 12 ~ AT UCLA LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
Stanford OCT 19 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
Oregon State OCT 26 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
University of Southern California NOV 2 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
University of Oregon NOV 9 ~ AT EUGENE, ORE.
University of California NOV 16 ~ AT BERKELEY, CALIF.
Washington State NOV 23 ~ SEATTLE, WASH.
