Leaf Has Turned in Washington

Under a light rain and after a hard, cathartic journey, some weird and sincerely moving things happened here Saturday.

The result was chaos in the stadium, jubilation on the field of a bitter rival, and the emotional end to Washington State’s 67-year Rose Bowl drought.

It left the Cougar coach cradling a bouquet of roses like a blushing bride, the towering Heisman Trophy candidate accidentally banging the Apple Cup into the ceiling and what seemed like half of Eastern Washington pouring onto the Husky Stadium field in spontaneous elation.

“This football team is going to be remembered for 100 years,” Washington State Coach Mike Price said after his Cougars had beaten Washington, 41-35.

That victory, before 74,269 at Husky Stadium, coupled with UCLA’s victory over USC, clinched Washington State’s first berth in the Rose Bowl since January 1931.

“Every person who ever puts on a jersey or follows football is going to remember this team and what it accomplished this year,” said Price, whose assistants waited to tell him that UCLA had won until very late in his own game. “We’ve done something very special.

“Everyone on this team has changed because of today, everyone who was out there, everyone who was a part of this has changed. We’ve changed!”

And for one magic afternoon, Husky Stadium changed too, into a Cougar-friendly environment, into a historic place.

“We were almost crying last night in our film sessions,” receiver Shawn Tims said. “We knew what we had to do, and we knew we were going to do it.”

Said receiver Chris Jackson, who caught eight passes for 185 yards and two touchdowns, backing up his much publicized verbal rip job of the Husky defense: “It does feel like we’re in a dream.”

As it has been throughout their 10-1 season, the biggest factor for the 11th-ranked Cougars on Saturday was quarterback Ryan Leaf, who completed 22 of 38 passes for 358 yards and two touchdowns--giving him 33 for the season, breaking the Pac-10 single-season record.

The quarterback comparison was the story of the game: Leaf was brilliant, especially on third down (the Cougars converted 13 of 19 third-down tries); Husky quarterback Brock Huard threw five interceptions.

When Leaf’s errant pass was intercepted by Husky defensive back Tony Parrish and returned 30 yards for a touchdown, closing Washington State’s lead to 24-21 in the third quarter, neither Leaf nor Price blinked.

“All I wanted was to get the ball again so we could score some more,” said Price, who before Saturday had never won a November road game in his nine years at Washington State.

A few minutes later, Leaf threw his second touchdown pass of the game, a 50-yarder play to Jackson, and two minutes after that, he answered another Husky touchdown by leading the Cougars to another score, finishing it by falling on his fumble in the end zone.

That put Washington State up, 38-28, and put the Huskies in desperation mode. Only a touchdown in the last nine seconds brought Washington within six.

“You can’t sit back there and let me throw the ball,” Leaf said. “Not with our little receivers, they just make those pinpoint stops in the zone and I get it to them. It makes it easy. We expected more blitzing.”

After the game, Leaf recalled that Price called him during the Wisconsin-UCLA Rose Bowl four years ago and told the then-high school senior that Price would someday lead Washington State to Pasadena in January.

Imagine that.

“Everything that I have in my life right now I owe to Mike Price,” Leaf said.

The rest of the Cougars were not bashful about their most important player.

“We knew going into this game we were going to win,” defensive lineman Leon Bender said. “And I think they knew too. You could see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices.

“Dang, we’ve got Ryan Leaf.”

They also had some good fortune, given that, including Leaf’s fumble recovery, the Cougars scored two touchdowns after recovering their own fumbles. Early in the third quarter, offensive lineman Rob Rainville grabbed Michael Black’s fumble at the bottom of the pile in the end zone, giving Washington State a 24-7 lead.

Bender, who bashed UCLA for being a soft team after the Bruins lost to the Cougars in the first game of the season, smiled brightly when asked about the twist of fate that made UCLA the Cougars’ best friend Saturday.

Washington State is in the Rose Bowl because Bender and the rest of the defense stopped the Bruins on fourth-and-goal from the one-inch line on Aug. 30.

“We think about it a lot, there’s a lot of what-ifs, and maybes out there,” Bender said. “What if we would’ve lost? But after that game we’ve been pulling for UCLA to win every conference game it played. And I want to thank UCLA for what they did for us today.”