Too Good to Be Through: The Apple Cup is distinctive (and in peril). Behind the Husky-Cougar rivalry, with new reporting

by Bud Withers, Bill Reader (Editor), Mike Siegel (Photographer)

The Apple Cup football rivalry matching University of Washington and Washington State surely isn't one of college football's most heated or hotly contested. But, as Too Good to Be Through describes in colorful detail, it's the college game's most distinctive backyard traditional, matching two schools sharply disparate in population, geography, climate, curriculum offering and political persuasion.Washington holds better than a two-thirds victory majority in the 125-year series, but that doesn't necessarily dull the appetite among fans on either side for a spicy rivalry marked even at its inception by disagreement and debate.

Now, with the greed-driven, drastic realignment of college conferences, the future of the Apple Cup is far from certain. Too Good to Be Through examines each game in the long series, but more than that, it looks behind the curtain at the relationships involving supporters of the UW Huskies and WSU Cougars that have helped make this one of the nation's most underrated rivalries.

Rich in anecdote, the book explores how the losing quarterback in a fierce, high-stakes Apple Cup became a career mentor to the winner; how tragic circumstances brought together a WSU superfan and a former UW player; how two fraternity brothers at the rival schools, longtime friends, came to spar regularly in Seattle juvenile court, one a prosecutor, the other a public defender; and the priceless pranks each side visits upon the other in the dogged pursuit of one-upmanship.

Based on the relationships alone, the book makes a compelling case for the rivalry to continue.

Genres: Sports

392 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2025