When Bill Moos and Rob Spear ushered in their respective new head coaches, rebuilding might have well been the only task at hand.
As a matter of fact, reinstating the first football game played by Washington State and the University of Idaho may have been nowhere near the top of the priority list.
In Pullman, the process has been a strenuous one — the Cougars finished 2012 a dismal 3-9 after winning two of their first three games under first-year coach Mike Leach.
In Moscow, much of the same has transpired around the Kibbie Dome. The Vandals and Paul Petrino enter Saturday’s Battle of the Palouse matchup 0-3, with nothing but a tight loss at the hands of MAC powerhouse Northern Illinois to show for their season, thus far.
Both programs have shown slivers of promise, but we’ll have to wait awhile longer before we can judge the quality of the Palouse’s most recent hires.
But if the athletic directors got anything right this past year, it was the resurrection of a game so rich in tradition and history that not even Moos and the superior Pac-12 Cougars could ignore it any longer.
Many are downplaying the Battle of the Palouse as just another game on the schedule.
“I don’t play a lot of attention to that,” Leach told the Spokesman-Review earlier this week.
Petrino was a little more receptive to the idea in Monday’s news conference, but the coach didn’t go out of his way to recognize its importance.
“Let’s see as the seasons go on, who we’re playing in our conference,” Petrino said.
Former Idaho coach and WSU assistant Robb Akey put the rivalry on pause in 2007 when accepting the Vandals’ head coaching job. Akey claimed the game served better as a “once-in-a-while thing,” and off-field problems may occur as a result of the schools’ proximity to one another.
The game hadn’t been played in six years when WSU’s Mansel Simmons was hospitalized after an alleged fight with an Idaho player in March. That brawl certainly didn’t seem to be the result of over-anticipation for a game that was then a half-year away.
This rivalry, one of the longest standing in college football, shouldn’t be overlooked. It was in 1894 when Idaho and Washington State College each played their inaugural football season. The schools’ 19th century match-up resulted in a 10-0 victory for Washington State — the kind of scoreline fans would become accustomed to for decades to come.
Idaho hasn’t kept pace with WSU, falling to the Cougars in 70 of the 90 games played between the teams.
But at their core, rivalries breed excellence both on and off the field — the level of competition should be irrelevant. They produce school pride unseen anywhere else and create traditions that make the university setting unique and special.
That’s why the Battle of the Palouse is something bigger than the head coaches roaming the sidelines Saturday evening in Pullman.
The decision to retain the rivalry is one that ought to be left in the hands of the student bodies, though it’s a dream only as good as the next.
For now, Moos and Spear deserve kudos for making Saturday happen. Now, let’s hope we can say the same 20 years down the road.
Theo Lawson can be reached at [email protected]