The wind howled, whipping flags and trees and wrappers and leaves and even bodies in need of some extra holiday weight in the months upcoming. Didn’t matter. Rain threatened to soak Seattle and, by extension, Husky Stadium, where a dormant college football power has awakened to find a landscape unlike anything from its early 1990s zenith. Didn’t matter. “Experts” could rank the Huskies No. 5 nationally, unbeaten (10–0, 7–0 Pac-12) but not, if it started today, in the College Football Playoff. Didn’t matter. Skeptics could doubt whether quarterback Michael Penix Jr., a leading candidate to win the Heisman Trophy, could lead UW to a national title. Didn’t matter. The Huskies conference home, rival schools and travel budgets will all change next season, when UW moves to the Big Ten. Didn’t matter.
Nothing did. Not one thing, not even a little bit. The enthusiasm of 70,976 (mostly) purple-clad enthusiasts who trekked here—despite foul weather, bone-chilling cold, incessant “disrespect”—could not be dimmed. It felt like 1991 all over again, from the streets packed with cars to the parade of purple to no empty seats to in-game music selection. Yes, on Saturday, as Washington ground out a 35–28 win over Utah, even the students from Generation Z went full grunge, strengthening the theme.
All that and, of course, this remarkable season, more than anything. This UW football season is context (from before) and history (at stake). It’s the infusion of new blood and the transformation of a power decades in the making. All have combined to trigger the best kinds of memories for locals of a certain age range, from a time where college football in Seattle mattered more than any other sport year-round.
