Oct. 2, 2003
BELLINGHAM, Wash. - Picking the best year in a heated intrastate rivalry like the one between Western Washington University and Central Washington University can be a bit dangerous. The memories are many - the schools first met in 1922 - and they run deep.
But a good case can be made for the 1995 season because of how much rode on the results that season and the quality of the players in the games.
The Vikings and Wildcats met twice in Bellingham that year - first in the regular season, then in the NAIA Division II playoffs. Western was ranked No.1 nationally at the time each game was played, but the results were split.
In the first meeting on Oct. 21, the Vikings, who had just moved into the top spot in the poll earlier in the week, claimed a 19-16 victory, with cornerback Orlondo Steinauer intercepting three passes and taking one for a touchdown.
But on Nov. 18, the Wildcats got revenge. Jon Kitna completed 35-of-54 passes for 455 yards and three scores in a 28-21 Central victory in an opening-round playoff game. The Wildcats went on to share the NAIA II National Championship.
Both Kitna and Steinauer are still playing. Kitna in the NFL as the starting quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals, Steinauer in the Canadian Football League as a starting free safety with the Toronto Argonauts. For both, the successes of 1995 were the launching point of a future career, and something they remember in remarkable detail. With their help, here's a look at the best season in the Western-Central rivalry.
THE PROLOGUE
Steinauer and Kitna both graduated from high school in 1991. Both had a variety of offers to play college football.
Steinauer had interest from Pac-10 schools, but wanted to see the field sooner. He also heard from Central, but chose Western.
At that point, the Wildcats clearly had the upper hand, having won every annual meeting of the schools since 1979. But Rob Smith had become Western's head coach in 1989, and the Vikings had started to close the gap. A Central team that reached the national semifinals that year edged out a 21-15 victory over Western in the regular season.
The rivalry, of course, poured into recruiting. Like Steinauer and many other players, Kitna visited both schools.
"I went to Central one weekend, to Western the next," he said. At Western, it was the weekend of the Western-Central basketball game. They took us to the basketball game, the gym was packed, and the crowd was yelling, 'Cennntralll ... YOU SUCK!'"
But it was something else on the visit that Kitna said challenged him to become a Wildcat.
"At Western a coach said to me, 'You can go to Central and be a number, or you can come to Western and be a starter.' That kind of made my mind up for me."
Both Kitna and Steinauer stepped into the rivalry in 1992. Each moved into the starting lineup almost immediately after redshirting in 1991 and had firmly established themselves by the time when the teams met at Bellingham in the final week of the regular season.
"Suddenly the stadium was full, the intensity was higher, the trash-talking went up,"
Steinauer said of the game. "You learn real fast to hate the guys in maroon."
That year, Western got its long-awaited revenge, a 37-7 victory.
"You could see in coach Smith's eyes how much it meant to him, and to the university" Steinauer said. "Now people knew Western could play."
Kitna, who threw for 137 yards, one of the lowest numbers of his career, remembers the game less fondly.
"I don't think I had to run around that much in a game again until the season opener this year against Denver," Kitna said. "It was the kind of game that makes you better."
The schools each won once over the next two years, setting up the 1995 season.
"A lot of the key players were all from the same recruiting class," Steinauer said. "We had been recruited by both schools, but we chose different paths."
THE MAIN EVENT
With an offense that featured players who became the school's career leaders in passing yardage (Jason Stiles), rushing yardage (Jon Brunaugh) and receiving yardage (Chris Nicholl), Western got out to a quick start in 1995, rolling up 118 points in its first three games, then going to No.1-ranked Linfield and grabbing a 20-13 victory. After a 54-6 victory over Southern Oregon the following week, the Vikings took over the top spot in the NAIA II poll Oct. 16.
Central didn't start quite the same way. The Wildcats were ranked No.19, but were 4-2 when the Vikings moved into the No.1 spot, with one loss at NCAA I-AA Montana State, the other a 35-32 defeat to Pacific Lutheran when the Lutes scored two touchdowns in the final three minutes.
The regular-season meeting took place at Bellingham a few days after Western became No.1. Twice in the first half, the Wildcats threatened to reach the end zone, only to be thwarted by Steinauer interceptions, one in the end zone, another on the Western one.
Then with the game tied midway through the third quarter, Kitna threw his fourth interception of the day, and Steinauer grabbed his third, taking this one 43 yards for a touchdown that gave the Vikings a 16-9 lead.
"I think he just misread the coverage," said Steinauer, who earned a spot in Sport Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" section for the performance. "He thought we were in man and we were in a zone. I just picked it off and ran it in. The timing was big. The way the game was going you could tell (there wouldn't be a lot of scoring)."
"We were sick after that game, because we already had (the two losses)," Kitna said. "I think we outgained Western by a big margin, but the turnovers killed us."
Western remained No.1 the rest of the way. Central didn't lose again, either, winning against Eastern Oregon on the final day of the season and then learning the next day that the team had earned the final berth in the 16-team NAIA II playoff field. The reward was another visit to Bellingham.
"There were a little over 5,000 people there," said Kitna. "I tell this story all the time because nobody here believes it, but I had the receivers on the outside telling me, "Go to hand signals, we can't hear you.'
"It was one of the most emotional games I've been in, because you knew it could be the end. We had played against the same cast of characters for four years - Stiles, Steinauer, all those guys - and the rivalry was so intense. We had a receiver, Kenny Russaw, who always had a hard time against Western because he'd get so jacked up and fired up for the games."
Kitna seemed to have no such problem. Spreading the ball to a variety of receivers, he was 21-of-31 for 310 yards and two touchdowns in the first half, and finished 35-of-54 for 455 yards and four touchdowns.
The opening touchdown of the game came on a 31-yard pass from Kitna to E.J. Henderson, a combination that had been together since their Pop Warner days as children. And they beat Steinauer, the nemesis from the first game of the season and the leader in the NAIA in interceptions that season with 10.
"When they scored first, it was a huge lift for them," Steinauer remembered. "And you could tell that it wasn't just a touchdown, they'd beaten No.2."
Kitna didn't specifically recall the celebrations being that personal, but said it was possible.
"It could have been - Orlondo had made Sports Illustrated with that first game, and you didn't see many talents like him at that level," Kitna said. "We didn't just score, we sent a message. But we always celebrated like that, anyway."
Touchdown passes to Russaw and Henderson made the score 21-0 early in the third quarter, and Henderson's third touchdown grab of the day gave the Wildcats a 28-7 lead with 12:24 to go.
Still, as befits a great game in a great rivalry, Western wasn't done. Stiles, who went on to spend two years with Portland of the Arena League, threw a pair of touchdown passes, the second with 2:17 left, to narrow the margin to 28-21. Central recovered the onside kick at midfield, but quickly faced a third-and-12 from its own 48 with 1:29 to play.
Kitna then delivered the knockout blow - a 20-yard strike over the middle to Henderson in traffic, a ball the receiver later claimed he didn't see "until it nearly knocked me over." It allowed the Wildcats to run out the clock.
"They had a good game plan," said Steinauer. "They started with a lot of underneath stuff, and Kitna was on. He proved why he'd thrown for 12,000 yards."
It was the end for the Vikings, who bounced back to reach the championship game in 1996. But the Wildcats were, in a sense, just beginning their run. Despite not being able to practice outdoors because of blizzard-like weather in Ellensburg, Central traveled to Texas and beat Hardin-Simmons, 40-20, in the national quarterfinals.
The Wildcats then "hosted" a semifinal at Sparks Stadium in Puyallup, beating Mary, N.D., 48-7. The key section of the game was the third quarter, when Kitna threw four touchdown passes, three on consecutive offensive plays, after Central had led by just two points at halftime.
The championship game was in the Tacoma Dome, back in Kitna's hometown of Tacoma, a 21-21 tie with Findlay, Ohio, notable in part as the final tie in the history of college football. Under the rule at the time, the two teams shared the NAIA II National Championship rather than go to an overtime tiebreaker.
From there, it was to the future. A future that was uncertain.
THE EPILOGUE
Steinauer signed a free agent contract with the Detroit Lions, but was cut late in the preseason. He was lured to Canada by Ottawa Rough Riders' general manager Leo Cahill, becoming the last player ever recruited by a man who had 25 years before lured Joe Theisman to the CFL.
Steinauer played a handful of games in Ottawa, then moved to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for the next three seasons, winning a Grey Cup in 1999, a game in which he had an interception. Following a training camp in 2000 with the Miami Dolphins cut short by a knee injury, he returned to Canada, and has spent the last three years with the Toronto Argonauts.
His record in Canada has been impressive - an all-CFL performer in 1998, he was tied for the league lead in interceptions in 1997, and tied for the CFL lead in tackles in 2002. Through mid-September of this season, he has 32 career interceptions, returning four of them for touchdowns, and ranks 10th all-time in the CFL in interception return yardage with 792 yards, the best mark of any active player.
Steinauer said his career owes a great deal to the success the Vikings had as a team in 1995.
"If we hadn't been ranked No.1 and undefeated in the regular season, I'm just some guy with 10 interceptions at an NAIA school," he said. "We just didn't get those looks. When the scouts came to work us out, half the team showed up to watch because it was all so new."
Steinauer and three other Vikings ended up at various levels of pro football outside the NFL, with one, safety Greg Malo, playing with Kitna for the Barcelona Dragons of NFL Europe.
For Kitna, though, the attention was different. Despite throwing for 12,353 yards in his career, few seemed interested. No scouts visited, but he did get a lifeline.
Central fullback Jamie Christian was the nephew of Dennis Erickson, then coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Christian's mother and Erickson's wife were sisters and watched the Wildcats nearly every week. Erickson came to see Kitna play during a bye week in 1995 and signed him to a free-agent contract the following spring.
Kitna spent 1996 on the practice roster, then late in the 1997 season, barely two years after his collegiate career ended, made his first career start, throwing for 283 yards and bringing the Seahawks from an 18-point deficit to beat Oakland, 22-21.
Kitna was Seattle's starter for most of 1999 and 2000, then signed as a free agent with Cincinnati, starting 27 of 32 games over the last two seasons. He has thrown for nearly 15,000 career yards, including three seasons of 3,000 yards or better, and his 313 completions in 2001 were just three short of the Bengals' record for completions in a season.
No other Wildcat ended up anywhere in pro football, but Kitna says some should have.
"At that time, we had a very competitive league with good athletes - Willamette, Pacific Lutheran, Linfield all had great teams. Guys just needed the right opportunity at the right time. I think there were a good 10 guys on our team who could have made it in the NFL if they'd gotten that chance."
