Recapping every Cougar football game, in five words or less

Good morning. As we greet the new year, and stare at eight-ish long months without Washington State Cougars football, one might think that it’s time to put WSU’s 2018 season to bed. That means we can either write about the basketball team or start forecasting what Mike Leach’s team will look like in 2019.

Seeing as how a lot will change between now and next fall, it seems a bit early to try and dissect the latter, and I sure as hell don’t care to write about the former. So what does that leave? Well, even though many of us wrote many thousands of words about the 2018 Cougar Football team and season, I don’t see much of a reason to write about anything else only a week removed. And God knows there is still lots of time to write about that garbage barge of a team Ernie Kent put together.

To that end, I thought I’d conduct a bit of a thought experiment, and by “thought experiment” I mean I sat on my couch for about 90 seconds trying to think about what to write today. As a result, I figured I’d try to sum up each of WSU’s games, only allowing myself a maximum of five words per contest. Here goes:

Game 1: WSU beats Wyoming, 41-19 - Whoa. Are the Cougs good?

Game 2: WSU beats San Jose State, 31-0 - Shutout? Cool! Second half? Yuck.

Game 3: WSU Beats Eastern Washington, 59-24 - FCS demons officially exorcised.

Game 4: USC beats WSU, 39-36 - Thought they’d lose. Should’ve won.

Game 5: WSU beats Utah, 28-24 - Minshew-to-Winston, season changer.

Game 6: WSU beats OSU, 56-37 - Endless Beavers gadgetry didn’t matter.

Game 7: WSU beats Oregon, 34-20 - No sleep, best day ever.

Game 8: WSU beats Stanford, 41-38 - Had ‘er all the way.

Game 9: WSU beats Cal, 19-13 - Playing Cal will always suck.

Game 10: WSU beats Colorado, 31-7 - Leach + fake mustache = priceless.

Game 11: WSU beats Arizona, 69(!!!)-28 - Well that was easy!

Game 12: Washington beats WSU, 28-15 - Always and forever.

Alamo Bowl: WSU beats Iowa State, 28-26 - A bowl win! Hell yes!

Final record of 11-2: Never in a million years...

So there you have it. We’ve flawlessly summarized WSU’s incredible season in fewer than 70 words. Let’s see how y’all would do it. Remember, five words per game is the maximum.

Football

So a lot happened while I was sleeping. The Colts won (yea!), the Seahawks lost (bummer) and James Williams said he was leaving WSU a year early. As much as I want him to kill it at the next level (pray he gets a NFL Combine invitation), his departure leaves a gaping hole in WSU’s offense. How many times over the last few years did we see him turn a loss or short gain into something much bigger? While Max Borghi is more than capable of shouldering a bigger load, WSU needs to find a guy or two to spell him. That will be easier said than done, especially since they did next to nothing, recruiting-wise, at running back in 2016 and 2017.

Running back James Williams leaves Washington State for NFL Draft. ‘I feel like I’m ready for it’ | The Spokesman-Review
“I was initially going to stay, and we talked about it more and more and I changed my mind, and I feel like I’m ready for it,” he said.

The great thing about these first two links, aside from the fact that both writers thought the Alamo Bowl was one of the best, is the diametrically opposite view of the Cheez-It Bowl. For the record, I side with Tom Fornelli.

Ranking all 39 college football bowl games for 2018-19 from the worst to the best - CBSSports.com
The Alamo Bowl was the only bowl game I had in the top 10 of my pre-bowl rankings to finish in the top 10. This tells us two things.

Ranking The Bowl Games From Worst To Best: How Good Was Your Bowl?
It wasn’t a shootout, but it was one of the stronger bowls.

Basketball

Don’t Care.

Washington uses late surge to down rival Washington State in Pac-12 opener for both teams | The Spokesman-Review
David Crisp scored a season-high 23 points and Jaylen Nowell added 20 as Washington defeated Washington State 85-67 in the Pac-12 Conference opener for both teams Saturday night.

This Week in Parenting

Picture the 4th of July in any American town that permits fireworks. Now multiply that by about 25 and you have New Year’s Eve in Germany. It’s complete bedlam from 1130pm to about 2am. Before that, we all went to a NYE party about 7pm, but my two kids were the only boys there, and like always the similarly-aged girls at the party locked themselves away for the evening.

As a result, the boys were ready to go about 10. So I brought them home, we watched some college football and they went to bed about an hour later. The barrage began soon after, and I’m not exaggerating one bit when I tell you that it sounded like the fireworks were detonating in my living room. This did not end in short order. I thought for sure the boys were going to wake up, to the point that I even opened their door and checked on them. Dead as doornails. I will never know how the hell kids sleep through such things, but I will be forever envious.

Beer

Best beer I had this week: I don’t drink many fruity beers, but Delirium Red is one exception. It’s also gone almost as soon as it hits the shelves over here, so when I found a couple on Saturday, they came home with me.

Best Cities for Beer Drinkers – 2018 Edition - SmartAsset
For the fourth year in a row, we analyzed data to find the best cities for beer drinkers.

Non-Sports

Best True-Crime Podcasts of 2018 – Rolling Stone
To help ease the overwhelm and simplify your end-of-year listening, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite true-crime podcasts of 2018, in no particular order.