FRANKIE LUVU, THE “Boa from Samoa” who played a key role in the renaissance of Washington State football, delivered perhaps the most succinct, yet telling, tweet of them all Saturday as his alma mater let go of another lead and lost, this time to Utah 24-13. Luvu, who is now a linebacker for the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, tagged @WSUCougar FB and then pasted an emoji.
That was the entirety of Luvu’s message. The emoji, however, spoke volumes: a guy doing a face palm. Indeed, three years removed from an 11-win season “we’re a basketball school” is more likely to roll off a pair of crimson lips than “I think the Las Vegas Bowl would make a great holiday getaway.”
How did we get here and how, seemingly, did it happen so fast?
While 2018 and College GameDay will burn bright in Coug Nation for decades, the fact is that the slippery slope to today began with the graduation loss of 17 seniors on that team who collectively were more than the sum of the parts. The group included extraordinary leaders like Peyton Pelluer and Hunter Dale, big energy guys like Logan Tago and Keith Harrington, and future NFL talents Andre Dillard and Gardner Minshew.
The Cougars opened the subsequent 2019 season with three-straight wins over second-tier foe New Mexico State, Northern Colorado and Houston. And then came the calamity that now takes on the same patina as the Seahawks’ Super Bowl loss to the Patriots: a wretched stain that won’t go away.
Three years ago almost to the day, the Cougars led UCLA by 32 points in the third quarter and lost 67-63. The program has never regained its footing. Those 2019 Cougars proceeded to lose seven of their remaining 10 games, including a lackluster affair against Air Force in the Cheeze-It Bowl that sent them into the offseason on the dourest of notes. When Leach left for Mississippi State a couple weeks later and the affable Nick Rolovich arrived with huge hat-and-beard fanfare, those troubles seemed to be forgotten.
But going back to that UCLA badinage and working forward to today, the numbers are sobering: WSU has lost 13 times and won just five. And the wins weren’t exactly against a Murderer’s Row of opponents: two over Oregon State and one each versus Colorado, Stanford and Portland State.
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