Despite 46 days of rain since the May 7 groundbreaking, construction is completed on time ... with 12 hours to spare. Pregame festivities are provided by soldiers from Camp Lewis – they fire shots from a 75-milimeter cannon – as a seaplane swoops over the dirt field. The crowd is estimated at 24,500, or 6,500 below capacity. (The only UW team Leonard Allison would coach begins the afternoon with a 1-4 record.)
As for the football, Washington scores its first points in more than five weeks, but loses 28-7. Taking a sound beating from an Ivy League team is hardly a humiliation in 1920. Dartmouth is a storied program: the Big Green will go to be recognized as shareholders of the 1925 national championship, 35 years before the Helms Foundation awards the Huskies their first version of a national championship.
Nov. 26, 1936 – The sixth-ranked and Rose Bowl-bound Huskies shut out No. 20 Washington State, 40-0, in what a newspaper will call “The Perfect Game.” Jimmy Phelan’s defense plays the entire game in Cougars’ territory, and doesn’t allow a first down until the fourth quarter.
Still, the day’s most telling statistic is the attendance of 40,735, the largest Husky Stadium crowd in six years. The decade associated with the Great Depression finds fans avoiding college football on Montlake: Of 59 home games between 1930 and 1939, only seven are seen by crowds exceeding 30,000.
Oct. 30, 1943 – World War II limits the Huskies schedule to three home games and only four overall, the last of which is a 41-7 victory over the 11th ranked Spokane Air Command. Washington finishes its schedule with a 3-1 record, and when it faces USC on New Year’s Day, more fans will show up in the Rose Bowl (68,000) than will have seen the Huskies all season long (63,000).
But the stadium does not go unused. It serves as home for many patriotic events featuring military displays.
Sept. 23, 1950 – Hugh McElhenny runs for what then is a school-record 177 yards in the season opener, a 33-7 victory over Kansas State. The newly constructed upper deck on the south side, increasing capacity to 55,000, is conspicuously empty, raising suspicions fans don’t trust the engineering design that has brought a cantilevered roof (as in: unsupported by vertical beams) to Husky Stadium.
If there are fears about the integrity of the upper deck, they are quelled the following week, when a single-game attendance record of 49,704 is set against Minnesota. The record will be broken again on Nov. 4, when 55,245 watch the Huskies lose to sixth-ranked California, 14-7.
Oct. 29, 1960 – Trailing Oregon, 6-0, with less than three minutes on the clock, the Huskies score a winning touchdown on a fourth-and-6 pass from Bob Hivner to Don McKeta. A Navy veteran from the small mining town of Wood, Pa. – he worked construction out of high school before enlisting in the service – McKeta uses his tough-as-nails savvy to deke Ducks cornerback Dave Grayson at the goal line.
The victory keeps hope alive for a Rose Bowl, where Washington beats No. 1 Minnesota. Although the Gophers claim a share of the 1960 national championship, the Helms Foundation – the only poll to assemble its rankings after the bowl season – awards the Huskies its national title.
Sept. 18, 1971 – Sonny Sixkiller outduels Purdue’s Gary Danielson in an epic confrontation of hot-handed quarterbacks. After Danielson’s pass to Darryl Stingley gives the Boilermakers a 35-31 in the final minutes, Sixkiller hooks up with Tommy Scott on a 33-yard score.
As Purdue is mounting one last drive, Rick Huget picks off Danielson to secure a victory coach Jim Owens would recall as his favorite comeback.
Nov. 13, 1982 – Fans storm the field and tear down the goal posts after a 17-13 victory over No. 3 Arizona State. The tradition of goal-post larceny is not all that unusual in 1982, but what distinguishes this celebration is that Don James’ team is 1,470 miles away. (A closed-circuit telecast of the game is transmitted into Hec Edmundson Arena.)
After surviving the Sun Devils, the Huskies are ranked fifth, with an inside track on advancing to their third Rose bowl in three years, but they must settle for the Aloha Bowl after a 24-20 upset in Pullman the following week.
Sept. 23, 1995 – A crowd of 76,125 – largest ever to pack Husky Stadium – watches Washington hold off Army with a last-minute defensive stand inside the 6-yard line. In the visitors locker room, Cadets defensive tackle Al Roberts likens the crowd noise to a C-130 transport on the runway.
“The acoustics in here,” Roberts says, “are amazing.”
Sept. 19, 2009 – Three games into his head-coaching career, Steve Sarkisian squares off against his former boss and close friend, USC coach Pete Carroll. Attempting a revival from the 0-12 season recalled as the worst in school history, the Huskies’ only logical hope against the No. 3 Trojans is to avoid humiliation.
But Washington keeps the score close. With the game tied 13-13, quarterback Jake Locker leads the offense on a drive culminated by Keith Folk’s field goal, leaving USC with only enough time to attempt a hot-potato kickoff return.
The scene of pandemonium is reminiscent of that goal-post snatching after the 1982 victory at Arizona State, which is only fitting: The agony of 0-12 seems more than 1,000 miles away.
