Canzano: Washington State's Apple Cup victory hits home
“It felt like we both knew it might be the last one..."
Matthew McNelly is the pastor at Pullman Presbyterian Church. I wrote a column about him on the day the Pac-12 splintered. McNelly’s youth group funds its yearly activities by selling parking spots in the church lot for $40 a pop on big Washington State football home game days.
“All that goes away now,” McNelly said.
Washington State upset Washington 24-19 in a thrilling game on Saturday.
The pastor wasn’t working the church parking lot. It sat empty. The Washington State vs. Washington rivalry football game — the Apple Cup — was played at a neutral site at Lumen Field in Seattle. But there was a victory of another kind happening in Pullman at an adult-care facility.
McNelly, 49, sat with his father, Joel, and watched the Cougars beat the Huskies. Dad, who turns 80 on Monday, is in a battle with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. And so the father and son ate chicken strips and french fries from Dairy Queen and drank soda while they cheered together.
“I grew up watching these games with my father,” the pastor told me. “It’s what we did together.”
Dad worked for 37 years as a pipe fitter and mechanical foreman. He retired, and started a winery with a co-worker. They made decent wine. They even won a couple of medals at a local wine festival.
Things have been tough for Joel McNelly since then. He now lives in an adult care home along with five other residents. Some days he does fine, but other times he greets his son with stories that don’t make sense. He announced last week that he got married, for example, to someone he dated in 1965. Other times, he gets frustrated that the facility staff won’t let him drive the luxury sports car he insists he owns.
There was no wedding.
There is no Lamborghini.
“It hasn’t been easy for any of us,” the pastor says.
A twin bed sat in one corner of the room on Saturday. Dad’s wheelchair was parked beside it. There were reminders everywhere of what had changed, and still, the Apple Cup felt like a slice of home to them both.
They’d watched the Huskies and Cougars play dozens of times before. This year, Joel sat in a brown recliner with a portable tray beside him. His son brought a folding chair he typically uses for camping trips and set it up. The father and son cheered and shouted together as WSU quarterback John Mateer scampered 25 yards for a touchdown just before halftime. Then, they roared with delight as Jake Dickert’s defense held on to win the game at the end of regulation.
The demise of the Pac-12 tested the faith of die-hard fans, didn’t it?
Would game day be as special?
Would the victories still feel as big?
College football game days are precious to a campus. They help drive gift-giving and boost campus enrollment. They raise the profile of the school, fund a line of jobs, and pay for school support programs.
McNelly’s youth group was left reeling in August of 2023. The collateral damage of college football realignment hits like a bag of rocks in a college town such as Pullman. Hotels, bars, gas stations, and restaurants faced the hurt. Big game football days are part of the local economy, and losing regular visits from schools such as USC, Oregon, and UCLA won’t be easy to replace.
Will San Diego State and Boise State get it done?
How about visits from Fresno State and Colorado State?
They’ll find out. The Pac-12 is in rebuild. I exchanged messages with McNelly this week. He reported that the church parking lot sold out last Saturday when the Cougars hosted Texas Tech. That was encouraging. And then, came this weekend’s game — and a WSU goal-line stand and cheers that everyone in the adult-care facility heard.
The McNellys celebrated.
Then, they did something else. They hugged. And the pastor left for home with tears in his eyes.
Matt McNelly said: “It felt like we both knew it might be the last one we get to watch together.”
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There is a rhythm to life. Christmas, New Years, Easter, school ends, Summer, school starts. And if you are a college football fan in the PNW it continues, first home game, warm fall games, cooler autumn games, Thanksgiving, Civil War game, Apple Cup game. And then it repeats. There has been a disturbance in the force.