Suddenly, Moscow is a football mecca

Quite uncommonly for a sports journalist from the United States, I have never been a big football fan.

The stop-and-start quality of the game, with its lack of sustained action, always made it less appealing to me than various other sports. Moreover, I would argue it is hard to blame me for having failed to develop a burning football enthusiasm growing up once one considers the largely less-than-decorated performance of programs representing the schools I attended in the 2000s and 2010s.

Having been born and raised in Moscow — where I reside to this day — it seemed a fact of life that I was, with rare exceptions, to be perennially represented by losing football teams.

Of course, as football is our culture’s single most celebrated sport in the modern day, the quality of local programs is often viewed as a key benchmark of the honor or prestige of a given community. For example, I am told it is largely for this reason that many Boise State faithful have been known to maintain a smug sense of their school’s superiority over the U of I, in spite of the Broncos’ lower graduation rates (something which might otherwise seem like a more sound metric with respect to the quality of an educational institution).

Therefore, I can hardly help but take a measure of pride in saying what for most of my life would have seemed all-but-unthinkable:

The city of Moscow may at this moment collectively puff out its chest and plausibly proclaim itself the football hub of the Tribune readership area, if not the entire Inland Northwest. It is presently home to three football teams, ranging from Division I college down to 8-man prep level, all of which are premier performers in their respective fields with tremendous positive momentum.

The Idaho Vandals (3-1), Moscow Bears (5-0) and Logos Knights (4-1) are riding simultaneous winning streaks that add up to a dozen games. Had the Vandals and Knights not gone out of their way to book season openers against a pair of the toughest nonconference opponents available to them, the three teams’ combined overall record could easily now read 14-0.

Vandals, Bears rewrite record books

To illustrate what an anomaly this is, I have combed through the past two decades of Moscow-based football history.

According to the records on MaxPreps.com, the Moscow Bears entered this fall having logged 14 losing seasons from the last 20, with a cumulative win-loss tally of 62-108. Their best run from that span came all the way back in 2005, when they went 7-2 after winning their first four games of the season.

Moscow has already outdone that start with a five-game unbeaten run thus far in 2024 — representing a radical turnaround from 0-8 and 1-7 seasons in 2022 and ‘23 — and its prospects for more victories seem distinctly bright, given the superiority of its ledger to those of upcoming foes like Lakeland of Rathdrum (3-2), Bonners Ferry (2-3) and Timberlake of Spirit Lake (1-4).

The Vandals, for their part, had 16 losing seasons from the last 20 and a net record of 79-155 in the same time period. Their 9-4 showings in 2016 and 2023 were the high-water mark.

Within the period I’ve researched for this story, the closest thing to a precedent for this year’s simultaneous Moscow High and UI successes would be the 2009-10 season, in which the Bears had a 5-3 record and the Vandals went 8-5, closing things out with a thrilling 43-42 bowl game victory on a last-second field goal against Bowling Green. Were betting odds kept for such a thing, I suspect they would comfortably favor the proposition that both the Bears and Vandals will best their 2009 counterparts’ win-loss tallies this year.

Knights join the fray

Meanwhile, when I was growing up — indeed, even at the time I got my start here at the paper — Moscow was altogether unrepresented at the small-school prep level, where football is known for its 8-man lineups with offense-heavy play leading to soaring, often basketball-like score totals.

That changed at the beginning of this decade when private Christian school Logos established its own football program, etching out a home field in an unlikely location by the wheat fields on the edge of town. After struggling to 3-6 records their first two seasons as a varsity team, the school’s Knights made a dauntless unbeaten charge to last year’s Idaho Class 1A Division I state playoff semifinals and fell 60-26 to eventual champion Butte County.

One might have speculated that the graduation of star quarterback Jack Driskill could slow Logos’ momentum, but the team seems not to have lost a step; the Knights elected to face Butte County again in a nonleague season opener which saw them drop a narrower 36-24 result, and have rattled off four dominant victories since. A looming showdown with returning three-time 1A DII state champion Kendrick, which is now a 2A Whitepine League foe under Idaho’s conference realignment, will be insightful as to just how far Logos can go this year.

A new normal?

The 2009 season referenced above took place during my first year studying at UI, and I remember the excitement that it generated. Idaho’s then-headman Robb Akey was the toast of the town, with adoring fans proudly dubbing themselves “Akey‘s army.”

Within a couple years, of course, the Vandals were right back to their losing ways and Akey was unceremoniously fired, providing me an object lesson in the often-fleeting nature of success and the fickleness of the public.

Will this year’s across-the-board excellence prove to be a similarly transitory phenomenon or the beginning of a tradition in Moscow? Is there any overarching reason the city has come to serve as a hub for football programs contending seriously for regular season and postseason glory at different levels, or is this simply something we were bound to experience eventually, like an alignment of the planets that occurs once in a generation?

Either way, it is a moment I never imagined I would see, and which has kindled a faint torch of enthusiasm within me at last.

Wendt may be contacted at (208) 848-2268, or cwendt@lmtribune.com.