Editor’s Note: The following story was originally published in 2006 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1981 Holiday Bowl team.
Walking through a drizzling rain on a New Year’s Day in Pasadena, the Washington State College football team departed the Rose Bowl Stadium field on the short end of a 24-0 loss to Alabama in the 1931 Rose Bowl.
Champions of the 1916 Rose Bowl, the 1930 edition of the Cougars had earned the second bowl berth in the history of the Washington State football program.
As the players departed the Rose Bowl that day, it marked the last time a Washington State football team set foot on a bowl game field in more than a half century.
A quarter century ago, on Dec. 18, 1981, the Cougars made a triumphant return to the bowl landscape after a 51-year hiatus. Not only did the Cougars turn in one of the most historic seasons in Washington State history in 1981, history would prove it would also be one of the most significant.
Expectations
In the 50 years following the 1930 Rose Bowl season, when the team finished 9-1, the Cougars did not win more than seven games in any year. Six times the team attained the seven-win plateau (1932, 1951, 1958, 1965, 1972, and 1977), but none of those seasons equated to a bowl bid. It should be noted that with the exception of the 1977 season, the Cougars’ absence from a bowl game was largely due to the fact that it was during an era when only the conference champion received a bowl berth, which was the Rose Bowl. Beginning in 1975, the Pac-8 Conference (as it was known then) allowed its members to compete in postseason bowl games other than the Rose Bowl.
Few people would have thought 1981 would be the season that ended the Cougars’ bowl drought. In fact, not much was expected of the 1981 Cougar football team heading into the season.
The Cougars were coming off a 4-7 campaign and an eighth place finish in the Pacific-10 Conference the previous year. In its 1981 preseason forecast, a poll of Pac-10 sportswriters and broadcasters predicted the Cougars to finish in the same position, eighth.
But though it had not equated to wins, under fourth year head coach Jim Walden, the Washington State football program had finally enjoyed a state of steadiness after a period of volatility.
When Walden arrived at Washington State in 1978, he was the fourth head coach of the Cougars in four years.
After Jim Sweeny’s…
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