DEAR COUGAR NATION,
THE HOUR HAS COME.
Tomorrow, we go west.
Across the Cascades. Across the water. Into Seattle.
Not for the occasion.
Not for the atmosphere.
And damn sure not just to compete.
WE GO TO WIN THE APPLE CUP.
They’ll have the noise. They’ll have a stadium full of purple convinced that place belongs to them.
LET THEM BELIEVE IT.
Because coming through that tunnel will be a team wearing CRIMSON AND GRAY carrying something far greater than itself.
They carry PULLMAN.
They carry the PALOUSE.
They carry every player who wore these colors before them and every Cougar who has ever understood what this game means.
There are football games.
There are rivalries.
And then there is the APPLE CUP.
Tomorrow will not be won by speeches.
It will be won at the line of scrimmage. On third-and-two. In the red zone. When the stadium is shaking and somebody has to make one damn play.
There will come a moment when this game asks something of us.
That is the moment I want.
Because then the noise disappears.
It becomes eleven men against eleven men.
Execution. Toughness. Trust.
And I’ll take the men wearing CRIMSON AND GRAY every damn time.
To the Cougars making the trip west:
MAKE YOURSELVES HEARD.
And to every Cougar watching from Pullman, Spokane, Prosser and every corner of Cougar country:
Stand with us.
Tomorrow, these men have a chance to represent Washington State and bring the Apple Cup home.
Leave nothing for Monday.
THE CASCADES ARE BEHIND US.
SEATTLE IS IN FRONT OF US.
THE APPLE CUP IS WAITING.
Cougar Nation—
STAND UP. BE LOUD.
TOMORROW, WE TAKE SEATTLE.
GO COUGS.
— General Kirby Moore
To the Powerbrokers of ESPN,
I write to you not from comfort, but from the scarred battlefield where college football now lies, its banners trampled and its proud traditions scattered like broken muskets after a rout.
You did not merely cover the Pac-12. You dismantled it.
With contracts inked in distant boardrooms and decisions made far from the valleys, mountains, and rivalries that gave this sport its soul, you reduced a century of history to a line item. West Coast sunsets, late-night kickoffs, regional grudges handed down from father to son—traded away for programming windows and quarterly gains.
Make no mistake: conferences have always shifted. Empires rise and fall. But this was no natural evolution. This was scorched-earth strategy.
You taught universities to abandon neighbors for airtime, rivalries for revenue, and identity for exposure. You turned student-athletes into inventory and traditions into negotiable assets. In doing so, you did not just wound the Pac-12—you fractured college football itself.
What once felt regional now feels corporate. What once felt earned now feels scheduled. Saturdays used to belong to the people; now they belong to spreadsheets.
And yet, you will tell us this was progress.
History will decide otherwise.
Long after the contracts expire and the studio lights dim, the sport will remember who lit the match. It will remember that when college football stood at a crossroads, you chose control over community, consolidation over culture.
The Pac-12 did not fall in battle.
It was sold.
And let us pause to give thanks where thanks are due. I thank God—plainly and without apology—that the PAC-12’s new television covenant does not shackle its programs to the JV exile of ESPN+. No grainy cameras, no student interns guessing at the down and distance, no broadcasts treated as filler between cornhole reruns and studio debates about leagues you’ve already overfed. Our games will be seen, heard, and respected—broadcast like the contests they are, not streamed away like an inconvenience. For once, the sport escapes your bargain bin.
Respectfully submitted from the field,
where traditions still matter and banners are still defended,
General Kirby Moore
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Brad Marchand is taking a leave from the Panthers to spend time in Halifax helping out a friend whose 10 year old daughter died of cancer
He’s coaching a U18 team tonight in his friend’s place
All-Time Human Being
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