PULLMAN - Keith Brown has already lived a few different football lives, and Washington has been a constant thread through them.
He’s faced the Huskies at Husky Stadium while at Oregon, then again in his first season at Washington State at Lumen Field. So as the Cougars prepare for Sunday’s season-opening Apple Cup against No. 17 Washington, Brown is one of the voices in the room with real first-hand experience of what this game feels like from both sides of the rivalry.
That matters for a WSU team trying to pull a major upset and chip away at a 22.5-point spread. Brown, who is set to start at linebacker in Trent Bray’s 4-2-5 defense, spent this week making sure younger teammates understood what they’re walking into.
“I would say, one, just make sure when you go there, you’re ready to compete,” Brown said. “When you go into that stadium, it feels like the fans are on top of you, and it creates a great atmosphere for football.
So just come ready to compete. It’s gonna be loud.
It’s gonna be fun.”
Brown missed all of last season because of injury, which kept him out of last fall’s Apple Cup, but he looked sharp in fall camp and appears poised for a key role in Apple Cup No. 118. This is the third straight meeting as a nonconference game, and WSU will need all the help it can get if it’s going to slow Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr., whom the source describes as one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks in college football.
For Brown, though, the larger point this week has been making sure the Cougars don’t treat the game like just another date on the calendar.
“For me, you approach it the same. You have to approach every game the same,” Brown said.
“But when it comes to tackling someone, you always wanna try to hit them a little harder and stuff like that. But no, I treat every game the same, whether it’s a rival game or not.
Wanna go out there feeling overly prepared, so I can go out there and do my best. So, for me, every game’s the same, but there’s definitely a little more extra excitement when it comes to this one.”
That balancing act is part of the job for coach Kirby Moore, too. He said the future of the series beyond 2028 is uncertain, but he made clear the Apple Cup still carries real weight.
“It still means a ton for both sides and for this state, and just really looking forward to our players going out there,” Moore said. “We want to make sure that everyone understands how important this game is.
Understand the history. There’s a lot of players who’ve been here for a number of years who understand that, and the guys who’ve transferred in.
There’s very few times that you get to be the first in the Apple Cup starting the season, and so we wanna make sure we’re maximizing that opportunity.”
Moore’s own connection to Washington goes back to his playing days. In 2012, during his penultimate season as a wide receiver at Boise State, the Broncos beat the Huskies 28-26 in the Maaco Bowl. Moore didn’t catch a pass in that game, but Boise State’s top receiver was Matt Miller, who had six catches for 90 yards and is now WSU’s offensive coordinator.
“We were probably watching that game during the prep,” Moore said with a grin.
That same year also gave Moore a family Apple Cup memory. Boise State was off the weekend after Thanksgiving, so he went back to Prosser, and his family made the roughly 160-mile trip to Pullman for the game. Moore remembers Washington State trailing 28-10 heading into the fourth quarter.
“And not gonna name names, but there were some people who came with us who left,” Moore said. “That game obviously changed in a hurry, and the Cougs did a great job of responding there in the fourth quarter.”
Moore’s Apple Cup education didn’t stop there. His college head coach, Chris Petersen, became one of his closest mentors after Moore’s freshman season at Boise State in 2009. Moore played four seasons for Petersen, spent a year coaching receivers at the College of Idaho, then returned to the Pacific Northwest in 2015 as a graduate assistant for Petersen after Petersen had taken over at Washington.
That gave Moore a front-row seat to how Petersen handled the rivalry, including wins in 2015 and 2016 during Moore’s two years on staff. Even with those games turning lopsided, Moore said Petersen made sure everyone around the program understood what the Apple Cup meant.
“Coach Petersen did a good job of giving history to the players,” Moore said. “I think that’s something we’ve done throughout the offseason with having Ryan Leaf, having Jack Thompson come in.
That’s something we wanna continue to do through this week. There’s a number of players that know it, and then there’s other guys that we want to make sure they’re educated on the Apple Cup and the opportunity ahead.”
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