A 126-year cross-state grudge that conference realignment split in two and still couldn’t break. One brother chased the Big Ten; the other stayed to rebuild a conference from the wreckage.
For 63 years, the Apple Cup was a dinner nobody in Washington could skip: a conference game, usually the last one of the season, the whole state circling the date. Then, in 2024, it became something almost unthinkable. A non-conference game.
That’s what happens when the league you’ve shared for six decades falls apart around you. Washington bolted for the Big Ten, Washington State got left behind, and suddenly the two biggest universities in the state didn’t have a conference in common for the first time since the early 1960s. In an era that has quietly buried dozens of rivalries in the name of media money, the Apple Cup looked like it might be next. Instead, the two schools signed a five-year deal to keep it going. This is the rivalry realignment couldn’t kill.
Two Washingtons
Start with the geography, because it explains everything. The Washington Huskies play in Seattle, a big, gray, coffee-soaked city on the western edge of the state. The Washington State Cougars play in Pullman, a small town tucked into the rolling wheat fields of the Palouse in the state’s far southeastern corner. Roughly 280 miles and a five-hour drive separate them, with the Cascade Mountains splitting the state into two moods: the urban, tech-money west and the rural, agricultural east.
They are the two largest universities in Washington, and for more than a century they’ve been the state’s great sorting mechanism. You’re a Husky or you’re a Coug. The Apple Cup is where those two Washingtons collide, and it’s been colliding since 1900, when the first meeting ended in a 5–5 tie.
An apple and a governor’s grudge
The rivalry’s name is pure Washington. The trophy history starts in 1934 with the Governor’s Trophy, a bronze shield donated by Governor Clarence D. Martin, who happened to be a University of Washington alum. In one of the rivalry’s great ironies, Martin is also the namesake of Martin Stadium, where the Cougars play their home games in Pullman.
Then, in 1963, the Washington Apple Commission donated a new prize, celebrating the crop that made the state famous. Fans took to calling it the Apple Cup, the name eventually swallowed the game itself, and the apple went on to become Washington’s official state fruit. Only here would a football rivalry be named after produce, and only here would that feel exactly right.
Big brother’s ledger
Let’s be honest about the balance of power: this has mostly been Washington’s show. The Huskies lead the all-time series 77–34–6, a .684 clip across 117 meetings, and they’ve authored the lopsided stretches, including two separate eight-game win streaks and a 51–3 demolition in 2000.
But the Cougars live for the ambush, and they’ve pulled off enough of them to keep Seattle honest. Each side owns a pair of overtime wins since the format arrived in 1996. And the rivalry’s most gloriously ugly chapter belongs to Washington State: the 2008 game the media christened the “Crapple Cup,” when a winless Huskies team stumbled into Pullman to face a nearly winless Cougars squad, and WSU won a double-overtime slog that nobody outside the state wanted to watch and nobody inside it will ever forget. Big brother usually wins the Apple Cup. Little brother makes sure the wins are earned.
The breakup that couldn’t break them
Here’s where the story turns, because the last two Apple Cups are among the most meaningful in the whole 126-year run.
Both schools spent decades as pillars of the Pac-12. Then, in 2023 and 2024, the conference imploded. Ten of its twelve members fled to bigger, richer leagues, Washington among them, sprinting to the Big Ten and its enormous television checks. When the dust settled, only Washington State and Oregon State were left standing, holding the conference’s name and none of its old power, a “Pac-2” scrounging for games at the edge of the sport.
So the 2024 Apple Cup arrived as the first non-conference edition in 63 years, played early in the season at Lumen Field in Seattle. And in the kind of script no screenwriter would dare, the abandoned Cougars beat their departed big brother 24–19. For a program that had just been left behind, it was pure catharsis. Washington restored the natural order a year later, hammering the Cougars 59–24 in Pullman in 2025, but the point had already been made: this rivalry was not going quietly.
Since then, the two paths have only diverged further. Washington settled into the Big Ten. Washington State, refusing to fold, rebuilt the Pac-12 from the studs, recruiting a new lineup of schools like Boise State and San Diego State for a conference that officially relaunches in 2026. It has cost the Cougars stability, including a revolving door at head coach, but it kept them alive. And crucially, the schools committed to keeping the Apple Cup on the calendar through at least 2028, alternating between Seattle and Pullman. The 2026 edition, set for September 6 at Washington’s Big Ten home in Seattle, will even open the season and christen the Cougars’ new era.
And football is only the loudest front. On the hardwood, the Huskies and Cougars have squared off about 300 times, one of the most-played rivalries in all of college basketball, with Washington leading there as well, 189–111. That series carries on as a non-conference date too, because a map redrawn by television executives was never going to decide who these two schools are allowed to play. Realignment redrew the map. It could not erase these games.
The Tale of the Tape
- The rivalry: Washington Huskies (Big Ten) vs. Washington State Cougars (Pac-12), the “Apple Cup,” roughly 280 miles apart across Washington state
- All-time series: Washington leads 77–34–6 (.684, 117 games)
- First meeting: Nov. 29, 1900: a 5–5 tie
- Latest meeting: Sept. 20, 2025: Washington 59–24 (Pullman)
- Biggest blowout: Washington 51–3 (2000)
- Longest win streak: Washington, 8 games (twice: 1959–1966 and 1974–1981)
- The defining moment: Washington State’s 24–19 upset in the 2024 Apple Cup, the first non-conference meeting in 63 years, right after Washington left for the Big Ten
- Beyond football: also one of college basketball’s most-played rivalries, about 300 meetings, with Washington leading 189–111
- What’s next: the 2026 Apple Cup, September 6 in Seattle
The send-off
Conference realignment has been a wrecking ball for college sports tradition. Century-old rivalries have been shrugged off, neutral-sited, and quietly discontinued because they no longer fit a spreadsheet. The Apple Cup had every reason to become one of those casualties. One school chased the money, the other got left holding the wreckage, and the shared league that gave the game its stakes simply ceased to exist.
They kept playing anyway. That’s the whole point of the Apple Cup now: it’s a promise that two schools on opposite sides of a mountain range, and opposite sides of a realignment earthquake, still owe each other one Saturday a year. The trophy is shaped like an apple. The grudge is older than almost anything else in the sport. And in the NIL era, when so much of college football is up for sale, a rivalry nobody could buy or break feels more valuable than ever.
The 2026 Apple Cup opens the season on September 6. Make your prediction before kickoff and see if you can call it.
A rivalry this old runs on new players every year. Fuel them. Back the Huskies and the Cougars on RallyFuel.
