Apple Cup Makes A Nice Tuneup

Since it may be a brand new century before we can hope to contribute an entire team from our precinct to an AFC championship game, let’s congratulate one another this week on being able to at least supply the quarterbacks.

Provincial, shmovincial. We prefer to think of it as potluck. Now, depending upon the depth of your dementia, when you fire up the Zenith for Jacksonville vs. New England on Sunday and see Mark Brunell slinging it out with Drew Bledsoe, you will either take on a glow of you-knew-them-when - or regard the proceedings as a mere footnote in Apple Cup history.

Of course, Armageddon is a mere footnote as regards the Apple Cup.

Surely, NBC already has video from Apple ‘92 locked and loaded for slack time Sunday - the clip of Bledsoe firing a 44-yard strike in a blizzard to Phillip Bobo, who collided with teammate C.J. Davis and then with a snowbank but hung on nonetheless for one of the most dramatic touchdowns in the war within the state.

Probably it’s a myth that several little Cougs born later that year were named “Fake Dive Z Post” in honor of the play that allowed Wazzu to sully UW’s Rose Bowl season.

This, obviously, is Washington State’s preferred snapshot from the Bledsoe-Brunell album, seeing as the other one is a bomb.

Two bombs, actually: the device the cops discovered in section 30 of Martin Stadium before the 1990 game and the game itself, in which Brunell threw three touchdown passes and the Huskies matched the biggest blowout in Apple history.

This is the context that colors the Jacksonville-New England game, though not the lot of it.

It turns out that when Bledsoe took his recruiting visit to Washington in 1989 and Cougs, that doesn’t make him a bad person Brunell was his host.

It wasn’t memorable. At 19, Brunell was quiet, reserved - OK, boring. Bledsoe considered it a business trip.

“We didn’t do anything,” Bledsoe recalled. “We went to dinner. We hung out in the dorm. We didn’t do anything exciting.”

Good preparation for three years in Pullman, wouldn’t you say?

“We’re not real close, but I consider Drew a friend,” Brunell said this week as the Jaguars enjoyed the national fallout from their unlikely saga. “I respect the way he handles himself on the field and off. His physical gifts are incredible. He’s got it all.”

Arguably, Brunell has more.

But in 1993, after their final collegiate snaps, it was Bledsoe’s world and Brunell was just living in it. New England took the Cougar quarterback with the first pick of the draft; Brunell was legitimately an afterthought - taken not only after Bledsoe and Rick Mirer (aaarrgh) but even after Husky teammate Billy Joe Hobert (megadittos).

Bledsoe immediately was thrust into the role of franchise savior - and Bill Parcells’ pet flog. Brunell beat out Ty Detmer in Green Bay - for the privilege of being Brett Favre’s caddy - and then wound up in a trade to Jacksonville.

Since then it hasn’t exactly been “Trading Places,” but this week at least Bledsoe can masquerade as the afterthought - ignoring for the moment that he threw for 4,086 yards this season and has New England talking about something other than Parcells’ career options.

Brunell is the supe du jour.

He has quarterbacked an expansion team in its second year to within a game of the Super Bowl, never mind that there’s another one on the other side of the bracket. He threw for more yards than any other quarterback in the NFL this season (4,367). He has out-Kellyed Buffalo and out-Elwayed Denver in the play-offs. He is running and ducking and juking and winging it - making the most of his 4.5 speed, underrated arm and obvious smarts.

“I didn’t see him improvise so much in college as he does now,” said Bledsoe.

You don’t see Don James glowering on the sidelines in Jacksonville either, Drew.

The obvious comparison is Steve Young - and it’s based on style, not jewelry. Brunell doesn’t seem to mind.

“I take it as a compliment,” he said. “Steve Young is one of the finest quarterbacks in the league.”

Bledsoe, meanwhile, gets the Dan Marino treatment, at least now that the perceived plateau he hit in 1995 has been conquered.

“I’ve played smarter,” he said. “I’ve made some big plays and eliminated some of the stupid mistakes.”

Certainly, given their youth - Brunell is 26, Bledsoe just 24 - this could be the next great quarterback rivalry, along the lines of YoungAikman or Marino-Kelly, with the added twists that it goes back all the way to their college days and that they both lifted their franchises from the depths.

The Patriots were 1-15 when Bledsoe came aboard. Brunell started from scratch.

“We had kind of a grace period,” Bledsoe said. “We were given the benefit of the doubt and given time to be successful.”

Back in the Northwest, that grace period figures to go on indefinitely.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review