Inside The Huskies

UW-Oregon Game Draws Preferable Kickoff Time

The teams meet again after two unforgettable Montlake match-ups, good and bad.
Dan Raley|
Huskies wide receiver Dezmen Roebuck (81) gets lifted up by Geirean Hatchett (56) after scoring a touchdown at UCLA.
Huskies wide receiver Dezmen Roebuck (81) gets lifted up by Geirean Hatchett (56) after scoring a touchdown at UCLA. | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

The University of Washington football team didn't get out of the Rose Bowl until midnight was fast approaching on Saturday evening in Southern California.

The good news for team followers is the Huskies (8-3 overall, 5-3 Big Ten) just played the last of their four night games held during this regular season -- though they won each of them by lopsided scores.

A better development is the UW will get the preferred 12:30 p.m. kickoff to finish up this regular season against seventh-ranked and neighboring Oregon (10-1, 7-1) next Saturday at Husky Stadium in a game that will be telecast by CBS and Paramount-plus.

"Obviously we're looking forward to the game on Saturday," UW coach Jedd Fisch said, immediately looking ahead and starting rivalry week early. "I'm told it would be at 12:30. I would hope there's not a seat in the house."

While late-starting games have been a turnoff to a lot of UW fans in recent seasons, with more and more people unwilling to sit in the rain and the chill, the Huskies actually got treated fairly well with starting times this season.

Besides the four 12:30 kickoffs that were assigned a week before each outing, which for years was the traditional starting time for UW football games at home, the Huskies also kicked off this season at 9 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

This next UW-Oregon game in Seattle comes on the heels of two that went into the record books as unforgettable, good and bad.

In 2021, then-Husky coach Jimmy Lake made the fateful decision to shove special-teams player Ruperake Fuavai on the sideline with national TV cameras catching his every move and it eventually led to his in-season firing -- which had never happened in Montlake before -- following a 26-16 UW defeat.

Two years ago, unbeaten UW and Oregon sides played in one of the most classic games of the overall series, with Ducks place-kicker Camden Lewis pushing a 43-yard field-goal attempt wide right on the final play, enabling the Huskies to emerge with a 36-33 victory and sending fans rushing onto the field in delirium.

The unbeaten Huskies, for that matter, went down to the final 1:38 before putting the go-ahead points on the scoreboard that day, with Michael Penix Jr. throwing an 18-yard touchdown pass to Rome Odunze to decide things.

So here we go again.

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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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