The Apple Cup is the name of the annual intrastate rivalry football game played by Pac Ten Conference rivals the University of Washington Huskies and Washington State University Cougars. These two universities have met 102 times in the history of the Apple Cup rivalry. Each season, the winner of this highly anticipated matchup goes home with the coveted Apple Cup trophy, a traveling trophy that remains with the school that won the most recent contest.
The University of Washington is located in Seattle, Washington (the largest city in the state). About 285 miles east of Seattle is the city of Pullman, Washington, home to the Washington State University Cougars’ main campus. The specific location of the annual Apple Cup game alternates between Martin Stadium (capacity 35,117) in Pullman and Husky Stadium (capacity 72,500) in Seattle. It takes students about four and a half hours to make the trip from one campus to another for away soccer games.
The annual game between the state’s two largest universities takes place on the Saturday following the Thanksgiving holiday and marks the final game of the regular season. Prior to the 2007 season, historically the game was played on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but due to the college football schedule being expanded to 12 games, the Apple Cup game was recently pushed back to the weekend after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day to preserve its spot as the final game of the regular season.
The history of how the Apple Cup title became associated with this rivalry is rather brief. For much of the history of this rivalry dating back to November 1900, the state’s opponents called it the Governor’s Trophy game, but that changed in 1962. Beginning with the 1962 game, the name of the annual meeting between The two universities changed from the Governor’s Trophy to the Apple Cup in recognition of the apple orchids and apples for which Washington State is so well known.
Although the name change officially occurred in 1962 when college football historians discuss the record these two schools hold against each other in the Apple Cup, they generally count wins and losses from the first meeting on November 30, 1900 which ended in a 5 -5 draw (a very strange final score by modern standards). Through the 102 meetings these programs have had on the iron grid, the University of Washington leads the overall series with a tally of 65-31-6.