#78 Washington State

Pullman, WA

Martin Stadium

September 6, 2025

Washington State 36 - SDSU 13 (ESPN Recap)

Pullman is just a close 8.5 hours of travel time from South Florida, so this game was super convenient to get to. Flew Sapphire points Alaska Air FLL->SEA->PUW which set me up to get to Jackson Hole Sunday. When I landed in Pullman at 12:30am local time, there were no Ubers, Lyfts, or Taxis running. The rental car counter was closed. And I was a cool 3.5 miles from my hotel, getting ready to walk and/or hitch hike.

Luckily, a guy driving a shuttle bus came into the terminal announcing he could take people to town. Four of us got on the bus that cost $1 to ride, and then made a loop to each of our drop off spots. One of the four guys had zero cash, so I covered his bus fare. He got dropped off first and got 25 minutes more sleep than me as I was of course last.

When I landed, the guy at the hotel called me to say he checked me in and left the keys to my hotel room inside Room 424 with the door cracked open. When I got to Room 424, I found this sticky note on the door. I eventually was able to sleep at 4am ET.

Wake up at 9am local because that’s when noon ET games kickoff. No establishments opened until 11am, so I watched early games until halftime in my hotel room. Then walked to “My Office Bar & Grill” and stayed there for 6 hours watching lots of screens. Headed through campus and to the game decently early to try and soak in the energy, but there wasn’t much. I came across the campus center next to the football field which had a big screen viewing of the OU/Michigan game. The Wazzu fans were really into it, cheering for the Oklahoma QB Mateer who was on their team last year.

Given the issues in getting to my hotel Friday night, I was trying to get ahead of my 4:55am airport ride for 6am flight on Sunday morning, submitting inquiries to various services online. The first quote I got back was for $708 “all inclusive.” I ended up getting a scheduled taxi for $30.

The Moon was beautiful and looked much fuller than the stands, and maybe that had an impact on the SDSU decision making at the end of the 1H and final 3 mins of Q4.

I bet the U46.5, which easily should have won, but lost with the game landing 49. There are 13 full points scored by Wash St that can be credited to SDSU doing really dumb things: 9 pts in the final 2 mins of the 1H in which they used timeouts on defense to set up a drive from inside their own 10 with no timeouts while “not having sniffed a drive in over an hour.” Rather than take the 10-7 deficit into the half, they took a safety and then gave Wash U a short field with two timeouts, which led to a TD…good coaching to be down 19-7 instead of 10-7.

Then the under still almost got there as it was 29-13 with under 4 mins left and Wash St driving. Cougs got stopped at the 11-yard line and line up to kick a FG on 4th and 7. This play was scary as it was blocked and returned for a TD, but the edge rusher who blocked it was offsides. They move 5 yards closer and kick the FG good this time on 4th and 2 from the 7, but the same edge rusher was offsides again…half the

distance to the goal…3.5 yards…first down. Three plays later TD. Losing bet. Quite annoying to lose 1H U23 and game U46.5 this way, but had WSU 2H -0.5 and in-game live unders of 49.5, 51, and 52 to finish 2-2 on the game.

Honestly, this was one of those football games that would have been absolutely miserable to watch without a dog in the fight (hardcore fandom for one team or betting). It was a pretty boring and unimpressive game.

Famous Washington St athlete community members include Drew Bledsoe, Klay Thompson, and Mike Leach (RIP).

The two funniest things that happened during the game were mistakes by the video board operator in the second half. First was “Play of the Game” in which they showed a 1st half Wash St punt, illegal touching penalty by the punt coverage team (ball hit a WSU player on the head as it was coming down), the SDSU returner seeing the flag come out and attempting a crazy return on a tough to field ball, which he fumbled and was scoop and scored by WSU. However, the scoop and score did not count and SDSU started that drive at their 43 yd line. They literally had the play of the game being a penalty on the home team. Then a few mins later they did the segment “WSU Cougars in the NFL” and proceeded to show a 20 second highlight of the current kicker hitting a GW-FG the week before. Gotta tighten that up before the conference schedule of the PAC 2 home and home with Oregon St.

It was an underwhelming experience for a game between two 1-0 west coast FBS teams on homecoming. There didn’t seem to be much energy at all in the town, on campus, or in the stadium for the Cougs. Low rating for what used to be part of the old Power 5 conferences.