The Good, Bad and Ugly washington state cougars football cougcenter

Hallo aus Berlin! I may live here now! It’s a long story! That’s a lot of exclamation points!

Anyhoo, Berlin will always bring to mind this clip from Eurotrip, which is hilarious if you haven’t seen it.

Love that movie.

As you can probably guess, being in Berlin for an afternoon (PST) Cougar game means one has to stay up well through the witching hours in order to watch live. Welp, I ain’t got no job, and ain’t got s**t to do on Sunday, so stay awake I did. Barely.

UPDATE: I went to be ad 530 a.m. and woke up at 1030. I’ll consider that a wash. A sleepy, sleepy wash.

Before we get to what may be the largest number of downgrades during a win in this column’s history, I want you to repeat after me:

Winning is hard. Winning on the road is really hard. Winning is hard. Winning on the road is really hard. Winning is hard. Winning on the road is really hard. Winning is ha…you get the point. Serenity now!

• Gonna start with the savior of the evening, Ethan O’Connor, who is to be commended for many reasons. First, he got picked on quite a bit early in the game, looking totally lost on one deep completion, but he didn’t let that affect him. His lone interception was the biggest play of the evening, and he had another interception taken away by a BS roughing the passer flag. Ethan came up huge when WSU desperately needed it.
• Dean Janikowski didn’t make any long field goals (he didn’t have to), but his two field goals were crucial. Not only that, but he averaged over 51 yards on three punts, including two deep in WSU territory. Not bad for someone who isn’t a punter!
• I’m glad the Cougs won in this uniform combo because it’s a good one and I’d like to see it again.
• Really good opening drive (long live the script!), the best play of which was Mateer finding Pululasi while under duress, and then Pululasi tightroping the sideline for a key first down on 3rd and 10.
• Really good blocking on WSU’s second touchdown, especially by Cooper Mathers, who sealed the edge long enough for Kris Hutson to cruise into the endzone.
• Wayshawn Parker had a solid day on the ground, especially late when WSU was trying to bleed clock. He picked up 65 yards on just 12 carries, and probably should have had more opportunities!
• Keith Brown came through with some critical QB pressures, including one in the first half that made a field goal, which missed, a much more difficult attempt.
• Great play in another key spot by Tyson Durant, snagging an interception after WSU turned the ball over in the endzone.
• WSU’s front four, as has been typical, didn’t provide nearly enough pressure on Mikey Keene, but toward the end, when Fresno got over midfield, those guys stepped it up and helped force some incompletions.
• Welcome back, Trey Leckner! The Freshman reserve tight end caught his first pass since the Portland State game, and it was a biggie, gaining 16 yards on a field goal drive in the third quarter.
• It was great to have Carlos Hernandez and Jamorri Colson back. Hernandez did catch one pass, but dropped another easy one and did a great job of playing DB on an awful Mateer throw.
• This would normally bad, but it really helped the Cougs so I’ll put it here – Fresno, you really helped us with the penalties. Like, the Cougs probably don’t win this game without the litany of flags you collected. So, thanks!
• Fresno’s play calling after WSU took a 22-17 minutes was also, uh, curious? After a bizarre play in which a Fresno kick returner fell into the endzone on his own – yet a safety didn’t ensue because ???? – the Bulldogs’ next plays went: QB draw for one yard, handoff for 10 yards, thankfully called back because of a procedure penalty (thanks guys!), handoff for 4 yards, handoff for 2 yards, punt. I know Fresno was having success on the ground, but WSU was clearly keyed into the run, and Fresno was forced to punt from its endzone. I mean, I appreciated it, but I’d be very frustrated by that sequence if I were (gulp) a Fresno State fan.
• Your Washington State Cougars, midway through the season, have won five games and lost just one. It hasn’t been a cakewalk – who has ever taken part in a cakewalk anyway? – but that doesn’t matter. 5-1 is damn good.

All that said, you may want to avert your eyes.

The Bad

• I don’t know how many of you look at the final stats pdf, but I use it a good bit for this article. Somebody thought they’d be cool and use WSU’s colloquial nickname instead of WSU. One problem…

Good job, good effort, dumbass.

• The Cougs drew up a beautiful trick play to Mathers early, and Mateer badly underthrew him.
• As god is my witness, I will never understand why coaches try to get cute and steal two points when an extra point would do just fine. PLEASE STOP IT ALREADY. It damn near cost WSU the game.
• There was a play in the second quarter when Kyle Williams took an end around for a first down. If you saw that play, you may have seen a defensive back practically committing felony assault on Kris Hutson, to the point that Hutson bent backward to his knees. Right out in front of the refs. No call.
• Fresno’s field goal kicker. Yikes. Also, I’m glad he’s bad!
• What on earth was happening with the on-screen play clock? Was it just off from the actual one or something? There were multiple plays where WSU was sitting there as the clock expired, with no call.
• Oh, but that does not excuse this coaching staff, which had to waste two first half timeouts because the play calls were way too late.
• It was pretty dumb at the end how, when Stephen Hall tackled a receiver in bounds but got injured, the refs didn’t wind the clock on the “ready for play” signal, punishing WSU for daring to get injured as the team with the lead. Stupid rule that helps the losing team.
• WSU’s defense bowed up when it had to, and it also scored the decisive points on its own. But man, giving up 120 yards to a backup running back? Who is running behind a very poor line? You have to do better, fellas.
• I don’t know who bought tickets to that “sold out” game, but for a school known to have a tough road environment, that place was practically a morgue, and there were thousands of empty seats.

The Ugly

• WSU’s offense gained 75 yards on its first possession of the game. WSU’s offense gained 64 yards IN THE ENTIRE SECOND HALF. Truly a masterpiece of offensive incompetence. The two guys who are responsible for making the offense go, Ben Arbuckle and John Mateer, were both stupefyingly bad.
• Red zone turnovers are backbreaking, and Mateer committed another one Saturday, getting baited badly by the safety.
• There was a stretch of offensive plays where WSU passed 21 times and ran twice. Nearly every one of those plays happened while WSU had a lead. I…I just can’t. And most of the time, WSU was not even pretending that it was going to run. No play action. No RPOs. Nada. That’s incomprehensibly negligent play-calling, especially when Wayshawn Parker is having solid if not spectacular success on the ground.
• How bad did this game get for WSU? A Fresno receiver caught a pass for a first down while wearing only one shoe. Super duper.
• And now for the complete disaster that was the telecast. Normally, I don’t really care that the announcers are not there. They can probably do a 90%-type job from their offices. But here’s the thing – if you’re gonna call games on the cheap, don’t insult our intelligence by trying to pretend you’re actually at the game. We know what’s happening!

Like, this is just comically inept:

But it wasn’t just that, as the entire production was deplorable. The ref’s mic didn’t work half the time. There was a weird green film and pixelation that kept popping up on my screen (pretty sure it wasn’t my computer). There were scores of instances where a flag was thrown and the announcers had no idea, as the camera showed something besides the official. It took the play-by-play guy a good 10 seconds to realize that Tyson Durant’s interception was not ruled incomplete (there was never an incomplete signal given). It was clear that the announcers had the same camera angle we did, which greatly hinders their ability to see the whole field and provide proper big-picture awareness. Fox is going to keep doing it, because Fox is terrible. This is the network that employs Urban Meyer, after all.

This Week in Parenting

Catching up for the last few weeks, most of which I’ve also missed! We’ll start with the precarious Florida weather situation. We were fortunate enough to not get many negative effects from the two awful storms. When Helene was approaching, the kids kept hoping for school cancelation. I was very skeptical, assuming that school wouldn’t be called off since, you know, the hurricane was like 200 miles away. “Yeah but what if it’s windy and the buses get blown over?” was the rather dubious argument the 12 year-old made. I scoffed at this desperate, last gasp effort. Oh how ignorant I’ve become.

Around 4pm on Wednesday, the school blasts out a mass phone call with the six words I have come to hate more than almost any other: “out of an abundance of caution.” That phrase sends me to damn near a murderous rage. So yes, it turns out the charmin-soft school district was worried about 15-20 mph winds blowing the buses into the gulf or something. Ridiculous.

Onto the mighty Dolphins, who have been dragged behind the aforementioned struggle bus to the tune of 76-14 over the last couple weeks, had another game Friday night. The team they were playing also had a bad record, so this game looked like it was possibly our best shot at a second win. Then again, I thought the same thing last week and we lost 35-7. So imagine my surprise and happiness when I woke up to see that the Dolphins had taken down Milton High, 26-17! YOU DON’T WALTZ INTO THE AQUARIUM (I don’t know if that’s what anyone actually calls it) AND EASE OUT WITH A WIN! NOT TODAY, PANTHERS! After five straight losses, only one of which was by fewer than four touchdowns, it had to feel great for those kids to leave the field as winners.

Although I haven’t been at the last two games, I am confident in one thing – the band almost certainly continued its streak of doing a Wizard of Oz rendition during halftime. For real, they’ve done the same theme with the same costumes and songs at every game, home and away. Feels like you could come up with at least two routines during your 9+ months in the offseason, but what do I know?

Last week was homecoming, and the teenager had plans to go with a guy friend, because god forbid he ever talk to a girl. Like I’m one to judge. Then somehow it turned into “I’m going with my friend and his girlfriend.” I didn’t know about any of this, but Mrs. Kendall was like, “That’s weird. You want to be the third wheel.” Still, he persisted. So mom took him shopping for a sport coat and slacks, and he borrowed a pair of my dress shoes. On the big day, his friend was rather tardy. Then the car pulled up and he hustled out. Not so fast, my friend!

Mrs. Kendall wanted to meet the kids he was going with, and wouldn’t you know it, not one, but TWO girls emerge from the car. Mrs. Kendall was flabbergasted, as evidenced by the, uh, let’s just say highly perturbed call I received shortly after the kid departed for the dance. She was certain that he had orchestrated a coverup of his date, and she was not happy! The 12 year-old was more pragmatic about the alleged caper, simply passing along advice to “make sure and use protection.” Well then.

Turns out his friends had set him up with the young lady, who is a Spanish exchange student. They spent like 10 minutes at the dance, making the $25 tickets well worth it, and then went to his friend’s house for the rest of the night. I’m sure there was more to it but he’s a terrible story-teller.

On the 12 year-old front, it’s been a mixed bag. His flag football team, the Argonauts, has gone 1-1 in its first two outings. He’s been kind of bummed since practice began, as he wasn’t a fan of his new coach, mostly because he really liked his coach from last season. He was also afraid that he wouldn’t get to play much. Well lo and behold, during the first game, he catches a touchdown passes and snags a key interception in the endzone to help preserve an Argos win. But sports giveth, and sports taketh. During the second game, he got confused in coverage and the other team scored a touchdown late to win, 19-14. When he told me the next day that he lost the game for the team, I said that no single person ever loses a team game. I also said I was proud of him for taking accountability for his error, which he hasn’t always been wanting to do! Onward and hopefully upward.

Tales from the Road

Hoo boy. I’ve been here for two weeks now, and I’m staring down another one due to the whims of tropical weather, its impact on political decisions, and the necessity for world leaders to conduct face-to-face interactions. That said, it’s been a while since I wandered the streets of a cosmopolitan European city, and it is once again an adventure, filled with mostly self-inflicted stumbling blocks.

To wit, on Friday night I hopped the train and headed across town, with a plan of grabbing a hot dog and some soup at a place called, wait for it, Hotdog and Soup, and head to a craft beer bar to dine with some local brews. As in war, my plan did not survive first contact with the enemy. I hopped the train and, after walking down some rather dark and quiet streets, located the dining spot. Only to see a large sign that read, “cash only, no cards.” I knew I had no cash, and yup, did not have my ATM card. God. Dammit.

Ok, time to figure something out. Thankfully, there were several eateries in the area. My only criterion was to find something that could be consumed easily, i.e. a sandwich or the like. I didn’t want to roll into the cramped bar and have to break out a bunch of plates and cutlery. No obvious sandwich places anywhere, so I tried a Vietnamese place in hopes of snagging a delicious banh mi. Nope. Back toward the bar, I spotted something akin to a kebab store. Good enough!

So I go inside and it quickly becomes clear that this order is gonna be a struggle. After some very difficult back-and-forth with the very kind Middle Easterner, we both settle that I want a crispy chicken sandwich with all the standard toppings, spicy, and a side of fries. When the food is nearly done – a span of probably 10-15 minutes – he rings me up. It’s then that, through some combination of languages I did not understand, he tells me that this place is also cash-only. Super. Great. Terrific. I was ready to leave without dinner, but then he made a call, and whoever was on the other end said I could take my food and pay later. I really doubt that would happen in most U.S. places but who knows.

After more inept attempts at communicating, during which I was using my phone to translate into Turkish, which I thought he had asked, only to realize he was saying “Arabi.” Another obstacle we can overcome! So I ask him a couple questions via Google translate to Arabic, and we get everything straightened out. I got my food, went to the bar and had a couple of ok beers with a sandwich that was, uh, below average.

Then on Saturday I hopped back on the train to venture across town (with a couple €10 notes this time!) to make good on the gentleman’s grace the prior evening. I walked in to this cash-only establishment and the guy didn’t even have change for my €11,50 tab. You can’t make this stuff up! He took one of my tens and called it good. If I hadn’t lived this misadventure, I would never have guessed it would take place.

tl;dr I spent like 80 minutes on the Berlin subway in a span of 16 hours for the privilege of consuming a borderline crappy sandwich because I wasn’t smart enough to have an ATM card on my person. You can’t fix stupid.