Apple Cup 2013 odds: Historical betting lines for WSU vs. UW

"All bets are off in a rivalry game." Or so they say.

They especially like to say it when one team is heavily favored in the betting line, as UW is for Friday's Apple Cup; the spread, which opened at 14 1/2 in most places, has reached as high as 16 1/2.

UW opens as heavy Apple Cup favorites

It will be a double-digit upset if WSU wins on Friday. (Photo: Otto Greule Jr. - Getty Images)

Collegiate football representatives from the University of Washington and Washington State University have played 105 times, the first being in 1900.  Prior to 1962, the series between the Huskies and Cougars was played for the "Governor's Trophy". Since then the two teams have played in the Apple Cup.

Of those 105 meetings, 58 were held in Seattle and only 31 in Pullman.

That's nearly a 2:1 advantage to the Huskies.

UW leads the all-time series 67-31-6.  That's nearly a 2:1 advantage Huskies.

There's something illogical about UW claiming Husky Stadium is one of the loudest and best home field advantages in college football, then ignoring how that probably played a role in their skewed winning percentage over WSU.  Either Seattle is a great home field advantage and the all-time series wins are horribly biased toward their direction because they've had so many more games there, or their home field doesn't matter at all and we'll count everything -- you can't have both. Until someone decides which is true, we'll start tracking the data from when the teams started playing a true home-and-home rivalry format.

WSU has won 38.7 percent of the time and only been favored in 22.6 percent of games since 1982, when the Apple Cup was moved from Joe Albi in Spokane back home to Martin Stadium. When UW is favored, they win 63 percent of the time and cover the spread for 73.3 percent of those wins. WSU wins only 43 percent of the time they're favored and have managed to win against the spread in 45.1 percent of all games.

Those numbers aren't so great. But they're also not anything a nice little winning streak couldn't turn around. It wouldn't take decades, just a few seasons and the percentages move back to even.

WSU's longest winning streak is two games; let's see if they can 'play the next play' enough times in a row to match that streak this Friday.  Who really cares about historical numbers anyway? Guarantee our players don't.

After Alex Brink's awesome run in the mid-00's, Mike Leach might be the next "Husky Killer".

Click to bigify

The Y-axis is the margin of victory. Columns are the difference in final score, with WSU victories being in the positive direction. The black line is the betting line for each game, positive values mean WSU was favored (giving) points and negative values mean UW was favored.

Here's tabled data for your enjoyment. Positive numbers in the line mean WSU is getting points (underdog), negative numbers mean they are giving points (favorite).  We aren't entirely sure, but think these are the opening lines, not where they closed at kick-off. Big thanks to Chad Lybeck for finding all this at Sunshine Forecasts

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