When Jeff McQuarrie set out to make a film detailing the history of Washington State University’s football program in 2003, he didn’t even know how to use a video camera.
But the 1987 WSU alum and now-communication studies professor at Centralia College was driven by one overriding question: What’s with the love affair that WSU alumni have with the school, and, more specifically, the football team?
That turned into a three-part documentary he produced called “Legends of the Palouse,” which is celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the release of the first part. McQuarrie traveled across the country interviewing over 100 people, including players, coaches, cheerleaders, mascots, athletic directors and media personalities such as ABC broadcaster Keith Jackson, Pro Football Hall of Famer Bob Griese and Colin Cowherd of Fox Sports.
McQuarrie grew up a Cougars fan deep in Husky territory in south Seattle. He was spellbound by the underdog mentality of the Cougars.
“I knew from a really young age that I was an underdog. It’s something you feel in your bones,” he said. “I think it was because we weren’t spoiled kids or anything. I just associated better with Cougars.”
When he was a student at WSU in the 1980s, McQuarrie began to notice the special kinship that alumni had with the school and the team. He could never quite stop thinking about that relationship and its origins even years later working in Alaska as the president of Sportsman’s Cove Lodge.
He no longer found the six-figure job to be challenging and felt his calling was elsewhere. On one New Year’s Day, McQuarrie found himself watching the Rose Bowl Game when the broadcast showed footage from the 1916 Rose Bowl between WSU and Brown University.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, if there’s footage from that long ago, what else is out there?’ I called the WSU library, and it turned out they had game film from way back,” McQuarrie said.
At the same time, he volunteered to help create a movie documenting the 150-year history of his church and had hired a professional filmmaker to tutor him in filmmaking. He quit his job in Alaska and set out to create what became “Legends of the Palouse” under his own video production company, McQuarrie Creative.
McQuarrie only planned to give himself six months for the self-funded project and focus on a couple of poignant aspects of WSU football history, including legendary Cougars coach Orin “Babe” Hollingbery. But after bringing Jackson, the man widely regarded as the “voice of college football,” into his own home for an interview, McQuarrie knew he had a duty to expand this project further.
“Once Keith Jackson got involved, my wife was like, ‘Holy smokes, you got the biggest broadcaster in all of college football coming to our house. You’ve got to do this big now,’” McQuarrie said.
McQuarrie had the chance to interview some of his boyhood heroes and meshed interview footage with game highlights dating back to the 1916 Rose Bowl for a six-hour collection he broke up into three DVDs.
Two decades later, McQuarrie said he made the rookie filmmaker mistake of “trying to do too much” and that if given the chance to redo the film, he would have made it more streamlined.
“Six hours was a bit much. I have a ton of footage in there that, unless you played for the team or went to the school at that time, it’s probably a little too much,” he said. “Other than that, it was a great experience. The cool thing about it was I had to have the courage to quit a six-figure job with a wife that wasn’t working and a little boy at home. The second thing was, what are the chances of somebody who’s never made a film and who didn’t even know how to use a video camera getting all of those big name players to be a part of this?”
After the film was over, McQuarrie wasn’t sure what to do with his life. With his young son entering elementary school, he had no interest in continuing to travel away from home making films. Then, the principal at Olympia’s Northwest Christian High School read a Seattle Times piece on the film and asked McQuarrie to teach a film production class.
“It had to be a God thing because the film was done and I didn’t know what I was going to do next. I was starting to get scared, and I was running out of money,” McQuarrie said, as he donated much of the proceeds from the film to the Gray W Varsity Club at WSU to support athletes. “I never planned to get into teaching, and I had no idea what I was doing and I liked it.”
He taught there for three years before being hired by Centralia College to teach communication studies in 2011. Looking back, McQuarrie believes his filmmaking days are done and that the film “served its purpose” as a way to get him into the education field.
“Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. If you do it, it can pay big dividends,” McQuarrie said.
A limited number of copies of Legends of the Palouse are available on Amazon.
