The Rotten Apple Cup

What a freaky game. After watching the Huskies charge the high school field we call Martin Stadium, all I I could was stand there and mutter those words to myself.

There was a blocked punt that bounced perfectly into the endzone, a kick returned for a touchdown, two bread and butter plays going for long touchdowns and Cody Ellis' catch, that seemed to hit off six different body parts and looked straight out of Madden 2007.

(Speaking of Madden, has EA Sports ever thought of a way to fight this curse by putting a player on the cover that nobody cares about? Madden has no NFL competition in video gaming, so sales won't drop if you put Chris Weinke on the cover. Seriously, I'd still buy it and when the curse hits him, the only people that would care would be the Madden-curse obsessed media and Weinke himself. No gamers will care. Or maybe sub the Weinke picture with a picture of Giants quarterback Jesse Palmer on "The Bachelor" to reach out to the female audience. Ok, i'm getting too far into this, back to the column.)

The scariest part of this game was the fact that the Huskies wanted this win more. No way did they want to lose three straight Apple Cups to the Cougars. No way did they want the Cougars to shimmy into a bowl game. No way were the Huskies going leave Martin Stadium without stomping in celebration after the game; an act that they had to suffer through when the Cougars beat them last season in Seattle.

Why was this so scary? The Cougars needed to win this game and had all the motivation in the world to do so. Not only was it senior night at the Apple Cup, the Cougars could have solidified a bowl game appearance with a win. So why were they out-played and out-performed by the Huskies?

The Huskies wanted it more. They wanted to prove that the Stanford game was a fluke. They wanted to prove that they could play through turmoil. They wanted to prove that they could win without Isaiah Stanback. And they wanted to prove that their program is made of winners once again.

No Pac-10 team can overlook their conference foes. This season has been a crazy one for the Pac-10 and was kind of like your office's fantasy football league. No matter who you played, you still had a shot to win. Think of some of the upsets in the Pac this season. WSU over Oregon? Oregon State over USC? Arizona over WSU, Cal and Oregon? Stanford over UW? And finally the Apple Cup. Who saw any of these coming?

Think of the Cougars' season being like the plot of Million Dollar Baby. The Cougars (played by Hilary Swank) are a team on the rise, proving people wrong left and right. Until suddenly, they start to fall and have their final match, in which they both get beaten by stools. (Are high-fives still cool? If so, I really need one right now.)

Whether or not the Cougars get to a bowl game this season, their is no excuse for their late season collapse, other than they over-looked their opponents.

After the UCLA game, it was obvious that this team deserved to be in a bowl game, a relatively prestigious one at that.

But judging by their last three games, I wouldn't say that this team deserves one anymore.

Entering the season, the coaching staff pushed one thing to this team. Finish. Finish what they started.

They started this season well, but did not finish it that way.

Think of this season as a wake-up call for the Cougars. They know that they can compete with any team in the nation. They know that they need to approach every game with the same mindset.

Most importantly, they know that they need to finish everything that they have started.