SeaTown Sports Brew - It's Apple Cup Week in September

Weekly Seattle Sports Roundup: Reflections and thoughts on the Apple Cup's Future

The SeaTown Sports Brew is a weekly briefing and roundup providing insight into Seattle’s sports teams and athletes. Have a tip? Leave us a comment or email me at kevin@seatownsports.org. Subscribe below if you want this in your inbox every Monday.

The Leadoff - The Apple Cup In Our Family

When Husky football season rolled around, my late father always quipped, “I love my daughter every single day of the year, except for the fourth weekend of November.”

He was referencing the Apple Cup, his love for the Huskies, and his more important love for his first daughter, who attended and graduated from WSU. Despite getting into Washington, Courtney claims she attended WSU for academic reasons, citing its broadcast journalism school, but I like to think she wanted to rebel, chart her own path, and because she secretly wanted to party in college.

Since losing my father over seven years ago, I often go through the “What would Dad think?” exercise in my head, especially when it comes to Husky football.

What would he think about the Apple Cup being played in the second week of September? He’d think it’d be weird.

What would he think about the Huskies playing in the Big Ten? He’d also think that was weird.

What would he think about the Huskies playing the Cougars at Lumen Field? He’d remind me that the teams played the Apple Cup at Lumen Field in 2011 when Husky Stadium was being renovated.

My dad loved the Apple Cup.

He loved teasing my sister about it. And, for the most part, we knew we couldn’t keep on giving Courtney crap about the Cougs because eventually, they’d just Coug it and lose to the Huskies whether it be in a nailbiter or a blowout.

But here’s the cool thing about my dad. Despite bleeding purple, once Courtney started attending WSU, he set his sights on becoming the best Coug dad for Courtney. This meant he loved driving her (and sometimes the rest of the family) to Pullman in August. He subjected himself to watching Cougar football at Martin Stadium. He even bought a Coug Dad shirt and sweater (telling everyone these were the only WSU merchandise he would ever wear). And he was on a mission to go to Dad’s Weekend every year while Courtney was at WSU.

At my dad’s funeral, Courtney’s college friends recounted their favorite “Jim moments” most of which involved him partaking in the camaraderie and recreation that Pullman has to offer. I loved hearing these stories. Perhaps the biggest insult I took from my dad came when he told Courtney that parent’s weekend at LMU was “kind of lame.” I’ve come to accept that when it comes to football, tailgating, and Parent’s Weekend, WSU beats LMU.

Dad at WSU Dad’s Weekend with my sister, Courtney and her friends.

Grief is different for myself, my sisters, and our mom. One of the biggest lessons I learned during grief therapy was that each of us had different relationships with my dad. And each of us continue to grieve his passing in different ways.

For me, I grieve him during college football season.

The past few years, it has been more of the happy I wish you were here type of grief, and much less of the sad why aren’t you here type of grief.

This time of year reminds me of when he took me to games when I was a kid, when I returned home during college to watch games with him, and when he talked endlessly about the team.

It has been close to 15 years since I moved to California. During that time, I almost always returned home for Thanksgiving and for the Apple Cup. If the game was in Seattle, one of us would sit in our family’s seats with my dad.

It sucks that the November tradition of the Apple Cup is gone. It also sucks that the Pac-12 disintegrated.

But we’ll deal with it, and we can still celebrate the Apple Cup in all the usual ways, even if it’s in September.

I know Courtney will be missing my dad this week. And I will be too.

---

Programming notes

A little housekeeping.

Every Saturday morning I email you a link to our weekend chat. Please leave a comment if you’d like me to stop emailing the links to avoid clogging your inboxes.

If you have the Substack app, you can get alerts when we start up our chat by following the instructions here.

As a reminder, you can control whether you receive newsletters and links to chats from us solely via email, solely via the Substack app, or both. You can do this by going into your Substack account settings and toggling your preferences. It should look like this:

You can also select whether you want to receive notifications when someone replies to your posts in the chats.

For the rest of football season, here’s a rough sketch of what our football posting schedule will look like for the rest of the month:

• Monday – SeaTown Sports Brew, Wait for It Seattle podcast episode drop

• Tuesday – Big Ten Football Power Rankings

• Wednesday – UW football opposition Q&A

• Thursday – UW game preview

• Friday – Seahawks game preview

• Saturday – UW game recap

We’ll mix in other things here and there, including, but not limited to, more mailbags, Storm playoff coverage, and college basketball coverage as the season nears in October/November. If you have any suggestions and ideas for potential posts, please leave us a comment!

---

Winners and Losers

• Winners - Seattle Seahawks (1-0) - The Mike Macdonald era is off to a winning start after the Seahawks beat the Denver Broncos, 26-20, led by a strong defensive performance. Our rants and raves of the game are at the 52:40 mark on this week’s Wait For It Seattle podcast episode:

  Wait For It Seattle, Ep. 13

• Winners - Washington Huskies (2-0) - The Huskies took care of Eastern Michigan. Huskies quarterback Will Rogers tossed four touchdowns in the win. My game analysis:

  Huskies 2-0, But Still Scratching the Surface: Explosive Plays Fuel 30-9 Win Over EMU

• Losers - Seattle Mariners (73-71) - I’m calling the Mariners losers this week because they split against the A’s. Taking two of three from the Cardinals on the road is helpful. Seattle is now 4.5 games back. They need to gain two games on the Astros between now and September 22nd because on September 23rd, they face Houston and could control their own fate by that point.

• Winners - Seattle Sounders FC (12-7-9) - Taking advantage of an ejected goalkeeper, and Columbus Crew’s midfielder Sean Zawadski playing keeper, the Sounders scored three unanswered goals to earn the impressive 4-0 road victory.

• Winners - Seattle Reign (5-5-9) - The Reign now have won three matches in a row after prevailing on the road against Angel City FC, 3-2. With seven matches remaining, Seattle is only three points behind the eighth-seed playoff spot.

• Winners - Seattle Storm (21-14) - The Storm went 2-1 last week, notching victories over the Connecticut Sun and Phoenix Mercury and dropping a game to the first-place New York Liberty.

On-Deck

• The Washington Huskies (2-0) and Washington State Cougars (2-0) meet for a September Apple Cup at Lumen Field on 9/14, 12:30 p.m. on Peacock.

• The Seahawks (1-0) travel east to face the New England Patriots (1-0) on Sunday, 9/15 at 10 a.m. on FOX.

• The Mariners (73-71) begin a nine-game home stand this week, hosting the San Diego Padres (81-64) for two games and then the Texas Rangers (70-74) for four games. All games will be televised on ROOTNW. On Wednesday, 9/11 the team’s 6:40 game against the Padres will also be televised on FS1.

• The Sounders (12-7-9) host Sporting Kansas City (7-7-14) on Sunday 9/15, 4:15 p.m. on Apple TV and FS1.

• The Storm (21-14) have three games on their slate this week:

  • Seattle face the Los Angeles Sparks (7-28) on the road on Wednesday 9/11, 7 p.m. on Fox 13+/Amazon Prime Video (Seattle).

  • The Storm then heads to Dallas to face the Wings (9-26) on Friday 9/13, 4:30 p.m. on ION.

  • Finally, the Storm host the Sparks on Sunday 9/15, 3 p.m. on Fox 13+/Amazon Prime Video (Seattle).

---

This Week in Seattle Sports History

On September 12, 1976, the Seattle Seahawks played its first-ever NFL game against the then-St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals beat the Seahawks 30-24. Can anybody name the Seahawks head coach for its inaugural season, without looking it up?

---

Fast Break

Why front-office changes for most under-achieving MLB teams appear unlikely - Ken Rosenthal (The Athletic):

The Mariners are run by yet another inert owner, John Stanton. They achieved a major breakthrough in 2022, ending a 21-year postseason drought, at that time the longest in professional sports. But what have they done in the two seasons since? Drawn criticism from catcher Cal Raleigh for not spending enough. Led the majors in strikeouts a second straight year even after turning over a strikeout-prone part of their roster. And on Aug. 23, replaced manager Scott Servais with a beloved former player, Dan Wilson.

The team has since gone (5-4) and still faces long playoff odds, wasting the best pitching staff in the majors. President of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto is completing his ninth season. His sloppy handling of Servais’ dismissal only added to fan frustration. But he seems to maintain Stanton’s confidence, and it would be an upset if the team started over.

The Mariners’ Jerry Dipoto isn’t going anywhere. Should fans care in 2025? - Mike Vorel (Seattle Times):

Why should fans continue to care?

Why should they believe the 2025 season will bring anything better? Why should they shut their mouths, pay their money and accept the status quo? Why keep faith in a franchise with one playoff appearance in the past two-plus decades, that (read: financially) refuses to strive for more?

Ex-Hawaii basketball coach Gib Arnold returns to college game with Washington - Brian McInnis (Spectrum News)

Gib Arnold is back in college basketball for the first time since his dismissal from the University of Hawaii a decade ago.

Arnold, who was fired as UH head coach on Oct. 28, 2014 amid an NCAA investigation and later assessed penalties by the collegiate governing body, announced on his Facebook account Wednesday that he has been hired to a support position on staff with the University of Washington men’s basketball team.

Subscriber Shoutouts!

Thanks to

Danny O'Neil

for subscribing. We’re big fans of your writing. If you haven’t subscribed to Danny’s Seattle sports newsletter, do yourself a favor and subscribe ASAP at dannyoneil.com. He provides a humorous, informed, and honest perspective on Seattle sports. I had the privilege of briefly interning at the then-710 ESPN Seattle radio station one summer ages ago and Danny was always willing to talk and provide mentorship. He’s one of the best voices in Seattle sports.

Shoutout to Tessa (my original editor all the way from high school), Jason, and

Neil Paine

for subscribing. I also recommend subscribing to

Neil Paine

’s substack here:

Neil’s substack covers sports with a focus on statistics, data, and analytics. He is a former sports editor and writer at FiveThirtyEight.com. His work is thoughtful and nuanced. I highly recommend it.

Is your name missing? Leave us a comment and complain, or wait until next Monday!