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2018 Washington State football schedule features seven home games, well-timed bye week

WSU takes to the field during the first half of college football game on Friday, September 29, 2017, at Martin Stadium in Pullman. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
By Theo Lawson theol@spokesman.com(509) 459-5584

PULLMAN – Washington State’s football team will still play seven games in Pullman next season, but the Martin Stadium games are spread more generously throughout the year rather than all clumped into the month of September.

And the bye week falls at a more ideal time – Week 7 instead of Week 11.

“My favorite place for the bye is the last third,” WSU coach Mike Leach said on Saturday after a game at Utah. “I think the SEC’s got the best notion on the bye. … In the perfect world, it’d be somewhere after approximately two-thirds.”

The Cougars opened the 2017 season at Martin Stadium and then played four more games inside their home fort to close out the month of September. They’ll spend the first week of the 2018 season away from the Palouse when they travel to Laramie, Wyoming, for a Sept. 1 date agianst the Wyoming Cowboys.

The 2018 Pac-12 slate will feature a handful of Friday night contests and the Cougars will appear in two of them: Sept. 21 at USC and Nov. 23 at home against Washington in the Apple Cup.

“For each of these contests, the road team will have a home game or a bye the Saturday prior to its Thursday/Friday game,” the Pac-12 said in its release.

During the 2017 season, four teams were forced to play Friday road games after playing away from home the previous Saturday. All four of them – USC, WSU, UCLA and UW – lost the Friday night game.

WSU defeated then fifth-ranked USC in Pullman earlier this season on Friday in Pullman and the 2018 rematch between the Cougars and Trojans in Los Angeles will open the Pac-12 slate for WSU.

The Cougars also play San Jose State and Eastern Washington in nonleague play – both games at Martin Stadium. In Pac-12 play, WSU once again misses UCLA and Arizona State.

The full 2018 schedule can be found below.

Saturday Sept. 1 – at Wyoming

Saturday Sept. 8 – San Jose State

Saturday Sept. 15 – Eastern Washington

Friday Sept. 21 – at USC

Saturday Sept. 29 – Utah (Homecoming)

Saturday Oct. 6 – at Oregon State

Oct. 13 – BYE

Saturday Oct. 20 – Oregon

Saturday Oct. 27– at Stanford

Saturday Nov. 3 – California (Dad’s Weekend)

Saturday Nov. 10 – at Colorado

Saturday Nov. 17 – Arizona

Friday Nov. 23 – Washington (Apple Cup)

(home games in bold)