Inside The Huskies

LA Bowl Primer For Those Who Know Nothing About UW's Postseason Game

The Huskies will face Boise State for the seventh time next Saturday at SoFi Stadium.
Dan Raley|
Jonah Coleman and Jedd Fisch embrace on Senior Walk.
Jonah Coleman and Jedd Fisch embrace on Senior Walk. | Dave Sizer photo

On Sunday, it was 70 degrees and sunny out in Los Angeles, which was reason enough for the University of Washington football team to accept an invitation to the LA Bowl to play Boise State next Saturday at SoFi Stadium.

The school made this postseason arrangement official with a late-morning announcement, which sets up a familiar yet unfamiliar bowl-game experience for the Huskies. ABC will televise the 5 p.m. match-up.

The UW previously has played in 43 bowl games -- breaking even with a 21-21-1 record -- with 22 of them coming in California, including 17 in the greater Los Angeles area.

Yet by playing next weekend, the Huskies (8-4 overall, 5-4 Big Ten) will appear in their earliest bowl game ever and conclude their season just two weeks into December.

In fact, this will be just the fifth bowl game the UW has ever played before Christmas, with a 1987 Independence Bowl the earliest on Dec. 19, with the Huskies beating Tulane 24-12 in Shreveport, Louisiana, and getting home with plenty of time to open their presents.

The UW and Boise State will meet for the seventh time, for the second time in a bowl setting, with the Huskies holding a 4-2 edge in the series. Previously, they've met twice in the postseason, both in the Las Vegas Bowl.

The Chris Petersen-coached Broncos edged the UW 28-26 in 2012 in Vegas and Petersen, after switching sides and in coaching his last game for the Huskies, oversaw a 38-7 victory over Boise State in 2019.

When it comes to bowl games, the Huskies certainly like to try new things. This will mark their 12th different bowl game over the past 16 seasons alone.

The LA Bowl originally was created to match Pac-12 teams against the Mountain West, which is ironic considering both leagues have imploded since -- with the remnants of the Pac-12 raiding the latter for new conference members, such as Boise State.

The Broncos (9-4 overall, 6-2 league) will play their final game as a Mountain West member against the Huskies before becoming a Pac-12 member for next season.

Meantime, the UW likely will make the LA Bowl a one-and-done outing because the agreement that uses so-called legacy Pac-12 teams is set to expire after this bowl season.

The LA Bowl had an ominous beginning, getting canceled in its first year in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic.

Since then, Utah State, Fresno State, UCLA and UNLV have won games that have averaged modest crowds of 29,875 on the average.

In 2023, the Bruins beat Boise State 35-22 in the LA Bowl and former UW quarterback Ethan Garbers was named offensive MVP.

So it's a made-for-TV game rather than one of great tradition and pageantry such as the Rose Bowl, which the Huskies have been to 15 times and will need to qualify for the College Football Playoff to ever play in that game again.

For those grousing that LA Bowl is well down the food chain of postseason rewards, remember it's 70 degrees and sunny down there.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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