Some of our fans are fond of saying that the Washington State Cougars do their best work when very little is expected of them. I always laugh when that pops up, because, well, very little is expected of the Cougs by the public at large in the vast majority of years, which means that WSU has a lot more chances to exceed expectations than most teams, and when they do, of course they do it as underdogs.
However, I’ll give those fans this: I do think it says something about a program when it can outperform expectations often enough that it becomes sort of a thing — as opposed to, say, Indiana or something.