Possibilities wide open for 6-3 Cougars after surprising turnaround

As unlikely as it seemed after their season-opening loss, the Cougs now have an outside shot at 10 wins. (AP)

I’ve been watching Cougar football since I was a freshman at Washington State in 1974, and this is turning into one of the most memorable seasons of all.

There have been seasons when we thought we’d be good and were, and seasons when we thought we’d be terrible and were. This season I think we thought we’d be halfway decent, hoping to get to six wins and a bowl game. But after the loss to Portland State and 59 minutes and 30 seconds of the Rutgers game, it appeared that we were headed toward one of our worst seasons ever.

So what makes it memorable is that the Cougars have not only salvaged the season, they’ve exceeded expectations to a point that Nick Daschel of CougFan.com wrote a story this week suggesting Washington State has a shot at 10 wins. And he went on to say that given a fairly light non-conference schedule in the next two years, the Cougs could string together three 10-win seasons like they did from 2001-03.

After the Portland State game, no one thought the Cougs would get to six wins, and here they are at 6-3 after beating Arizona State 38-24 last Saturday at a sold-out Martin Stadium. That game was like the season. We fell behind 14-0 in the first five minutes, which caused one of my kids, Mikey, to want to leave, only to see him celebrating three hours later after the Cougars came back and coasted to victory.

We have become a respectable team, one that can compete with anyone in the Pac-12. We’re one missed field goal away from realistically talking about winning the North and playing in the conference championship game.

You don’t have to stretch your imagination much to think that this team could be unbeaten. If we played Portland State again, we would win this time around. We lost to Cal by six points, and if we played the reeling Golden Bears right now, we’d see a different outcome. And Stanford … good Lord, everyone who watched that game knows we were the slightly better team that night, but we lost by one point.

Now we head to UCLA for a Saturday night kickoff in the Rose Bowl thinking about better games replacing the New Mexico and other lower-tier bowls that the six-win teams go to. The Bruins are favored by 9.5 points, but UCLA nearly lost to Colorado at home two weeks ago.

If we beat Jim Mora’s team – and we’ve reached a point where it would be called a mild upset – we would be ranked in the top 25 and would head back to Pullman for our last home game against Colorado. We’d be double-digit favorites to improve to 8-3, and then we’d have a good shot to beat the 4-5 Huskies in the Apple Cup on Nov. 27.

If we finished 9-3, we could go to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio or the Holiday Bowl in San Diego and perhaps face one of the top-10 teams in the country. By that time, we could be one of those teams, too.

Listen, I know that’s no doubt crazy talk to think the Cougs could be in the top 10 three weeks from now. How about top 15? Maybe that’s more reasonable. Whatever, I also know that we could still lose our last three games and finish 6-6.

Heck, if you gave me two wins out of three, I’d take it right now as long as one of those wins is against the Dawgs, who are still complaining about officials’ calls from the Utah game when they should be griping about their players fumbling it away four times.

Personally, I think the Pac-12 officials are doing a great job this year. As proof, they gave us a fifth down against Arizona State, and it was a thing of beauty. We couldn’t get 10 yards with four downs, but with five downs, we scored. I don’t think that line judge who inadvertently blew his whistle should have gotten suspended a game; he should’ve gotten a raise.

At any rate, I’m rambling and already looking forward to Saturday night’s game where all things are suddenly and astonishingly possible for the Cougs.