Inside The Huskies

Road to 1991 Perfection: Walter Bailey Put Exclamation Mark on Cal Victory

The University of Washington cornerback was up for the challenge when his team went head to head with the unbeaten Bears. He brought things to an end.
Dan Raley|
Road to 1991 Perfection: Walter Bailey Put Exclamation Mark on Cal Victory
Road to 1991 Perfection: Walter Bailey Put Exclamation Mark on Cal Victory

Five seconds left.

Ball at the Husky 24.

Time for one more play.

This was an epic battle in 1991. 

Washington against California.

A pair of unbeatens.

The nation's third-ranked team against No. 7.

A Berkeley crowd of 74,500 watching.

An ABC national TV audience tuning in.

It all came down to one snap.

Bears quarterback Mike Pawlawski took the ball, looked left and heaved one for Brian Treggs, who had stopped just outside the end zone.

Treggs would finish as one of Cal's all-time leading receivers.

Sign as a free agent with the Seattle Seahawks.

Covered one on one on this last gasp, he reached for the ball.

Husky cornerback Walter Bailey leaped in the air and swatted it away.

Game over.

Final score: Washington 24, California 17.

Nearly three decades later, Bailey revels in the moment with one perfectionist lament

"I should have picked it off and gone 98 yards," he said. 

This is another in series of vignettes about the UW 1991 national championship football team, filling in the conversation before the pandemic-delayed season begins next month. We're in week 6 of the perfect 12-0 run.

Bailey had a game to remember in the Bay Area. He intercepted a Pawlawski pass early in the second half.

The Portland defensive back came away with a season to cherish, too.

Bailey intercepted eight passes, returning two of them for touchdowns.

The 5-foot-10, 190-pound defender went on to sign as a free agent with the New York Giants and played in the CFL with the short-lived Sacramento Gold Miners.

Bailey battled with long-term addiction and depression issues that he shared in this story with the Seattle Times. 

Yet on a hot day at Cal nearly three decades ago, Bailey and the rest of the defense came through when the Husky offense sputtered at times, preserving the national championship run.

"We had a lot of fun on defense," Bailey said of beating the Bears. "We took it as a personal challenge that we didn't need the offense to win."

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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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