If you’re missing WSU football, this Tri-Cities Cougar fan created a way to fill the void

Kennewick’s Rob Ellsworth has had enough of the coronavirus situation.

The lifelong fan of Washington State University football — and all things Cougars, for that matter — isn’t going to sit idly by this fall without any sports.

“This has just dragged on too long,” said Ellsworth, who is a senior adviser in real estate for SVN I Retter & Company. “Back in the spring, when I was a little bored, I started watching Apple Cup reruns.”

He said he watched a particular favorite, one in which the Cougars dismantled the University of Washington, at least four times.

Ellsworth and his wife Dawn have been WSU football season ticketholders for years — nine consecutive seasons and 14 overall.

If there was a Saturday home game, the Ellsworth’s would climb into their motorhome on Thursday afternoon and stay in an RV lot near the stadium until Sunday.

“You do that, and you don’t hate those 7:30 p.m. Saturday games,” he said.

But as the summer wore on, Ellsworth said he realized that maybe the Cougars might just play home games without fans.

“I resigned myself to not being in Martin Stadium this fall,” he said.

It wasn’t much later that the Pac-12 Conference announced it was canceling all sports activities for the fall.

That wasn’t going to do it for Ellsworth.

“I’ve gotta have something,” he said. “I started joking with my friends that I was going to put together a season of Cougar football. We’re going to have Cougar football every Saturday.”

What Ellsworth did was put together a viewing schedule of WSU football victories, via YouTube.

Here it is, with the day he and his friends are watching, and what year the WSU team played its opponent: Sept. 5: 2019, at Houston; Sept. 12: 2001, vs. California; Sept. 19: 1988, at Tennessee; Sept. 26: 2017, vs. Boise State; Oct. 3: 1997, at USC; Oct. 10: 2018, at Stanford; Oct. 17: 2002, vs. Arizona State; Oct. 24: 2003, at Oregon; Oct. 31: 2016, vs. Arizona; Nov. 7: 2014, at Utah; Nov. 14: 2003, at Colorado; Nov. 21: 1988, at UCLA; Nov. 27: 1992, Apple Cup vs. Washington; Nov. 28: 2005, Apple Cup at Washington; Dec. 5: 2019, vs. Oregon State; Dec. 12: 2001, Sun Bowl vs. Purdue; Dec. 19: 2015, Sun Bowl vs. Miami; Dec. 26: 2003, Holiday vs. Texas.

In this schedule, the Cougars will be 17-0. It’s also noteworthy that Ellsworth picked one game only against each Pac-12 opponent — except for Washington.

“Sometimes the Apple Cup was played on Saturdays, other years it’s been on Fridays,” he said. “Why not have two?”

All of these games are on YouTube. And it took him just a couple of hours to put the lineup together. He said he also didn’t concentrate games with one season’s squad. He wanted to see as many Cougars as possible.

“The fun part was going through past schedules, figuring out which games to pick out,” Ellsworth said. “The biggest criteria is, we’re going to be undefeated.”

Ellsworth said he almost grabbed the 2003 overtime loss at Notre Dame in 2003, but again, he wanted the Cougars to be unbeaten.

“Sometimes I’ll watch the games at home, sometimes at our cabin,” he said. “But in this way, I’ll still have Cougar football.”

While he might have a couple friends over, he said, don’t just come to his house unannounced. Social distancing, ya know.

And who is to say other fellow Cougs couldn’t follow this schedule on their own?

Sometimes, you have to find ways to cope with loss. This is Ellsworth’s way to cope with no live WSU football this fall.

“I was born in Pullman,” he said. “My grandparents worked at WSU. I’d go visit them and my grandfather would take me to their practices. I’ve always been a Cougar.”

Of course, he graduated from there too.

“Being a Cougar is never perfect,” Ellsworth added. “You always have to scrap and fight to win.”

Usually, WSU has one of the smallest athletic budgets in the entire conference.

“So when we do something great, it means more,” Ellsworth said. “I love fellow Cougs. I’d rather lose with our folks, than with their folks.”

And this will help him get through the fall.

He also has a plan if he gets impatient between Saturdays.

“I’ll just sprinkle some of those games I didn’t pick in the middle of the week if I get bored.”

Notes

• Columbia Basin College released its final batch of sports schedules for the school year on Tuesday.

Men’s and women’s basketball, and volleyball, will all share the CBC gym in the spring.

Their schedules will mirror each other. For instance, if the men’s and women’s basketball team has a doubleheader at home on a certain date, the volleyball team will be on the road that same date.

The basketball teams will get two rounds of games against East Region opponents, plus a few non-league contests, for a 20-game schedule.

The volleyball team gets the same thing.

Basketball opens Feb. 13 at home against Wenatchee Valley, while volleyball heads to WVC that same day.

• JP Zamora, the junior starting quarterback for Chiawana High School, received an offer from Nevada this week. That now gives Zamora two Division I offers, with Utah being the other.

• Keep an eye out this winter for Shea Kasenga. The 6-foot-1 forward/center from College Place has been having a strong summer playing AAU girls basketball. She’s just a junior.

• Daniel Puerta, who wrestled for Riverside High in Boardman, is headed to La Grande, where he’ll be wrestling for the Eastern Oregon University men’s team this winter.