This Saturday, Washington State plays in its biggest game since 2003 when the No. 15 Cougars faced No. 5 Texas in the Holiday Bowl. That same year saw the most recent regular-season game of consequence, when No. 6 WSU hosted No. 3 USC on November 1 and promptly got their doors blown off, 43-16.
Similarly, the last time Colorado had a ranked-on-ranked match-up was in 2005, where they went into Austin and got smoked 42-17 by a Longhorn team that’d go ahead and drop 70 on them a couple months later in the Big 12 Championship.
After that season, the Buffs won 10 conference games in five years under Dan Hawkins, with the high water-mark of his tenure cresting in Shreveport for a six-point loss to Alabama in the Independence Bowl.