Washington State University Athletics - Official Athletics Site
The 1981 Cougs get their due with a Hall of Fame speech
When the 1981 Cougars walked into the Hall of Fame, it wasn't just a class getting its due. It was a reunion of a team that spent decades waiting for the phone to ring. And when the speech finally came, it didn't sound like a highlight reel. It sounded like Pullman.
That's the thing about these Cougs. They weren't the flashiest team in WSU history. They didn't have the national profile of some later squads. But they had something else. They had each other. The speech made that clear, not through stats or game recaps, but through the kind of stories you only get when a group of guys has been sitting on the same memories for forty years. There were jokes. There were pauses. There were a few moments where you could tell the speaker was feeling the weight of the room.
It reminds me of something we ran earlier this year. If you liked the way Lee Blakeney's Hall of Fame speech let you hear the man behind the helmet, you'll want to catch this one too. Same kind of honest, unpolished love for the program.
The 1981 Cougs didn't need a plaque to know what they meant to each other. But it's good that they finally got one. Go Cougs.
