The Apple Cup, a 126-year-old tradition and one of the biggest dates on the state of Washington’s sports schedule, is teetering.

You knew that. College football realignment, and the move by Washington to join the Big Ten as the old Pac-12 collapsed, has jeopardized the Apple Cup as a non-league entity, even as the Huskies and WSU have completed only three years of a five-year contract.

Weighing heavily on the tradition is college football’s likely move to a 24-team playoff next season, compared to the current 12.

Along with that dramatic expansion is a mandate for all Power 4 schools to schedule 10 games against other Power 4s as (a) television encourages more high-level matchups and (b) schools that have shied away from tough non-league games because losses have been judged harshly by the playoff committee now figure to be more willing to risk defeat.

Currently, Washington doesn’t have a Power 4 non-league opponent on its 2027 schedule. It hosts Fresno State and Portland State and is scheduled to visit Washington State.

Five teams each from the Big Ten and Big 12 are lacking 2027 Power 4 non-league foes, and the Sports Business Journal reports that the two conferences are involved in trying to help schools facilitate Power 4 opponents, specifically proposing three-team deals that “would go against the traditional home-and-home announcement that most series are built around.”

SBJ wrote that “could involve Team X hosting Team Y next season, with a return game at Team Z the following season.”

The Cougars would figure to be a prime target for such wrangling. They’re scheduled to host two Power 4 schools next year – Kansas and Washington.

Even before the prospect of a 24-team playoff, the trend toward the 10-Power-4-opponents mandate tilted the future of the Apple Cup toward uncertain. The Big Ten was a holdout against that policy but with the SEC, Big 12 and ACC on board, it likely would have been untenable for the Big Ten to be the only wallflower.

Why is that 10th Power 4 opponent so pivotal to the Apple Cup? Like a lot of schools, Washington budgets on the basis of at least seven home football games annually. If the Huskies add another Power 4 non-league opponent in a home-and-home arrangement, it can’t accommodate the Cougars in a home-and-home concurrently and annually satisfy that seven-home-games policy.

The Apple Cup contract ends in 2028, and in 2029-30, Washington has a home-and-home series with Tennessee on the books.
Already, that would jeopardize continuation of the Apple Cup. Meanwhile, in a Sept. 4 conversation on KJR-FM with Dave Mahler and Dick Fain, UW athletic director Pat Chun said the UW was in active conversations with other Power 4 schools about schedules into the 2030s. Any routine home-and-home agreement that might come out of those talks would create problems for the Apple Cup’s future. (There was no follow-up question regarding the Apple Cup posed to Chun’s statement.)

Absent an obvious path to keep the Apple Cup afloat on a yearly basis, there have been alternatives proposed – simply ending the series, or perhaps having it continue but not on an annual basis.

The Huskies might also propose a format in which the Cougars would have to visit the UW twice for every trip Washington would have to make to Pullman. I had a recent conversation with WSU’s new athletic director, Jon Haarlow, and asked him if that would be a workable alternative for the Cougars.

“It would depend on the terms,” Haarlow said.

I took that to mean: How much money would the Huskies be willing to pay for such an arrangement?

The Cougars are strapped for cash right now, having experienced severe cutbacks with the realignment-caused drop in conference revenue. But the Huskies are similarly cash-cramped, partly because they realize only a half-share of Big Ten revenues until the end of the decade.

It’s also possible that with Washington on the hook to visit WSU next season, the Huskies simply buy out the remaining two years on the contract. But the schools announced Monday a switch of their Sept. 18, 2027 date to Aug. 28, 2027, so the back-and-forth between the two has at least initially been about preserving the game in the short term.

Of course, any UW buyout of the last two years costs money, and Washington might not like the optics of being the one to disrupt – or end – the series.