Apple Cup 1997, nine seconds remaining. On the Washington State sideline, defensive tackle Leon Bender plucked a rose from hastily delivered bouquet and paraded in front of the grandstand -- the flower under his nose, performing an exaggerated sniff.

Shawn McWashington had just smothered an onside kick -- the Washington Huskies' dying breath -- and Washington State's offensive starters jogged back onto the field for one last play, the obligatory kneeling which would take the clock down to :00.

Already, the aisles of Husky Stadium in Seattle were hopelessly clogged -- downcast Husky fans beating feet for the exits, antsy Cougars dancing toward helpless security guards whose authority would quickly be giddily subverted. Just a few more seconds. After 67 years of angst, surely they could hang on a few more seconds.

As the greatest athletic moment in Washington State history unfolded, Ryan McShane watched fans in Cougar crimson clot the portals to the field. He exulted in their communal joy, cocked his head skyward to bathe in the sweet rain and gave himself over to the roars of thousands and the wild bleatings of trumpets. He looked around and marveled as grown men -- many of them his teammates -- hugged and cried.

McShane would be swept up in the moment soon enough. One of 26 Cougar seniors, the 300-pound tackle reveled in every victory large or small during this remarkable season. He understood completely the healing that had taken place -- for an entire culture of enduring Cougs and for himself, as he made his way back from a haunting personal tragedy. And yet it wasn't in his nature to let the moment pass without a laugh.

“Did you say this was a pass play?” he joked, trying to coax a smile from quarterback Ryan Leaf -- perhaps the hardest thing to do on a football field, next to sacking him.

“Shut up and get up to the line,” Leaf barked back.

Leaf had a point. In the crazy history of Cougar football, many a sure thing had unraveled in less than nine seconds.

They used to have a word for that. But if any single factor guided the Cougars to the Pacific-10 Conference championship in 1997 and their first trip to the Rose Bowl since 1931, it was a stubborn tunnel vision on the task at hand.

And until those nine seconds ticked off, preserving WSU's 41-35 victory over the Huskies, the task remained unfinished.

Only once all season were the Cougars not up to the task -- on the first of November, when a couple of missed blocks and two fatal fumbles allowed Arizona State to escape with a victory as the midnight hour approached in Tempe.

On 10 other autumn Saturdays, the Cougars celebrated. One game was saved with a goal-line stand, another won in overtime. Weaklings were ravaged, good teams humbled. Along the way, the 1997 Cougars salved wounds incurred by their undermanned forebears going back more than half a century and muffled the disparagements heaped upon their true believers.

“All those years, we always laughed, too,” former Cougar quarterback Jack Thompson told reporters after the Apple Cup. “We had to use humor. What else could we do? But deep down inside, it sucked.”

Now the laughter is full, and true. The same kind of laughter emanated from Evanston, Illinois, in 1995, when the Northwestern Wildcats hoisted themselves out of the gutter and basked for a few, glorious moments in the penthouse -- eventually losing to USC in the Rose Bowl. But even Northwestern's suffering dated back only to 1949, the Wildcats' previous trip to Pasadena. And it's not as if they had to be discovered by college football's hype machine there in the wilds of north Chicago.

Contrast that with 1997 when, as Christmas approached, there were still precincts out there that weren't aware the Cougars had reached the Rose Bowl.

There is no four-lane highway in or out of Pullman, not even an exit off the beaten path. Remoteness, resources, tradition -- all have conspired to make it a steep grade to the Rose Bowl.

The grade looked particularly steep in 1997. In February, athletic director Rick Dickson belatedly announced the schedule -- having moved the UCLA game from November to August 30. That gave the Cougars games against UCLA and USC back-to-back to open the season.

Coach Mike Price swallowed hard and called the parlay “an opportunity.” And at his summer home on Coeur d'Alene Lake, former Cougar coach Jim Walden saw it as a bonanza.

“I want it on the record -- that's the best job of scheduling in the history of the school,” Walden raved.

“I don't know if Mike would agree, but there are years I would have killed for that schedule.

“You have a better chance of beating UCLA early in the year than later, and especially at home. Same with USC with a young quarterback. And when you have to go down there for what I call a `heat' game, you're much better off in September when you're used to it. It's harder than people realize to take a team from 58 degree weather to L.A. in October. USC's able to beat people in the fourth quarter just because they're used to it. I remember not being able to catch my breath, and I was just coaching.”

But the team Price led into this jackpot had been picked to finish seventh in the conference. He had a sensational, sometimes streaky, quarterback in Leaf, a fine running back in Michael Black, a rather suspect offensive line and five wide receivers who hadn't even played the position in high school. The defense was green in the secondary and at linebacker.

Of the Cougar starters, only Leaf and Bender had been what you'd call high profile recruits out of high school. Five had come to the program without scholarships, unheard of on a championship team.

“I truly think the only people who believed we could do it were the players and coaches,” said sophomore linebacker Steve Gleason. “Maybe we were underdogs, but we were underdogs who believed.”

A few more believers could be found after the Cougs held off UCLA 37-34 with that goal-line stand. And when they won at USC for the first time since 1957, the bandwagon was already in high gear.

That's when things got treacherous. Nine games still remained, but the Cougs had already disposed of the two teams they'd never before beaten in the same season. It was the perfect recipe for overconfidence, and for heartbreak.And yet on they rolled. Each week, in Pricespeak, became another opportunity.

“As many seniors as we have and all we've been through, you're not going to get caught looking too far ahead,” said Cory Withrow, a senior offensive lineman. “This is the last chance for some of us, and every moment counts.”

Along the way, the country got to know the Cougs a little bit, against those geographical odds. Leaf passed his way into Heisman Trophy contention, and stamped himself as the greatest quarterback ever at a school that's produced a dozen great ones. The loquacious Bender became sport's most quoted man this side of Charles Barkley. And a national magazine recounted the inspirational tale of McShane and his best friend, guard Jason McEndoo, whose wife had been killed in a 1996 auto accident in which McShane was driving. How they survived the tragedy and put their friendship back together cut to the heart of the 1997 Cougars.

“We like one another -- I think we're exceptionally close,” said Withrow. “You hear that from a lot of teams, but I've been on teams here where there was a big split between the offense and the defense, or between one guy and the rest of the guys on his unit. We don't have that here.”

As they neared their grail, they also built a bridge back in time. Seven surviving members of the 1931 Rose Bowl team were located, many with plans to attend again. An eighth, Carl “Tuffy” Ellingsen, passed away at the age of 92 -- with the television in his room tuned to the WSU-Arizona game.

The 1997 Cougars liked to say that they made history weekly, and they did. They also reconnected with an era long forgotten.

But they also distanced themselves from an old persona, and made it a special year for those who consider themselves Cougars by birth, or by diploma, or possibly even by attitude.

“This team will be remembered for 100 years,” is how Price put it. Because this was the team that decided to stop and smell the roses.

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Editor's Note: The Washington State Cougars went on to play in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day 1998 in Pasadena, California, losing to the Michigan Wolverines by a score of 21 to 16.