SEATTLE — Forgive the University of Washington football team if it doesn’t remember the Alamo. After all, the Huskies have never been there before.
On Sunday afternoon, they found out that the program will be making its first-ever trip to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio. Waiting for UW will be a Baylor team led by one of the most exciting players in the country.
“Very challenging,” UW defensive coordinator Nick Holt said Sunday morning, when asked about the possibility of facing Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III in a bowl game. “He can throw the ball, he scrambles, he runs.”
“Tremendous player,” added UW coach Steve Sarkisian, who, like Holt, admitted he hasn’t seen more than one or two of Griffin’s games this season. “What I’ve appreciated about him, it seems like he’s in very good command of what they do. He’s in charge of the whole thing. He can utilize his legs, (and) he can throw the ball down the field as well.”
The player widely known as RGIII could be the greatest test for a UW defense that has already faced Heisman Trophy candidates like Stanford’s Andrew Luck, USC’s Matt Barkley and Oregon’s LaMichael James this season.
But that was of little concern Sunday night, when the Huskies were thinking more about a second consecutive bowl appearance than they were the next obstacle.
After seven consecutive seasons without inclusion in the bowl season, UW has now received back-to-back invitations to the Holiday Bowl and Alamo Bowl —the top two bowls behind the Rose Bowl in the Pacific-12 Conference pecking order.
“It’s a big honor for us to be selected for this game,” quarterback Keith Price said in a statement following the announcement of the Dec. 29 game at San Antonio’s Alamodome. “It’s a great reward for the team and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to play.”
For the second year in a row, UW benefited from a mediocre conference beyond powers Oregon and Stanford as well as NCAA sanctions against USC. This time around, the Pac-12’s two-team inclusion into the elite BCS bowls left a prominent bowl, and a ranked opponent, for the taking.
Much like last season’s Holiday Bowl against Nebraska, the Huskies will face a heavily-favored team in Baylor. The Bears (9-3) are having one of their finest seasons in school history, and they’ll be making their first bowl appearance since losing to Washington State in the 1993 Alamo Bowl.
UW’s bowl history, although meager for much of the 21st Century, has a pretty impressive lineage that includes 14 Rose Bowl invitations and 31 postseason berths overall.
The Huskies (7-5 this season) have been to nine different bowls in their history, but never the Alamo Bowl. The bowl has been around since 1993, but last year was the first in which there was a tie — in with what was then called the Pacific-10 Conference.
Baylor, located three hours away from San Antonio in Waco, is ranked 15th in the country and features an offense that averaged 571.3 yards per game — the second-highest mark in the country.
That might not be the greatest matchup for a defense ranked 94th in yards allowed per game — the Huskies’ porous defense has allowed 426.3 yards per game, which is almost 150 fewer than the Bears have put up — but UW is just happy to have another game.
And, as senior linebacker Cort Dennison said before the pairings came out, the Huskies aren’t afraid to face some of the top talent in the country.
“I want to play the best of the best,” he said Saturday. “That’s what makes college football fun. That’s what brings out the competitor in you, in all the players. You want a challenge. You want to play the best of the best, whoever we play against.”
In RGIII, the Huskies will get just that opportunity.
They just hope any memories of the Alamo Bowl will be pleasant ones.
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