Giving up a near guaranteed sell out to round out our home schedule in favor of another opponent would be incredibly stupid, in my opinion. You'll never get the conference to agree to give us an away game in the final week every year.
I suspect the economic benefits are quite optimistic. If there was any reason for Ellensburg to be some sort of hub and/or economic bridge from east to west...it would be. A new stadium isn't going to make the difference. Even if somehow the pieces fell into place and all the expos and conventions that were mentioned earlier
did agree to come to Ellensburg, there's the same problem Pullman has - not enough hotels to support it, and new ones aren't going to get built to support a dozen events per year.
Deep down, I don't personally
want them to move Apple Cup up on the schedule, unless it's moving it back to the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Just doesn't feel like AC if it's October. But, I can see the sense in it. And I really DO believe that the conference would give us a season-ending road game at the end of every other year. In fact, I'd bet there'd be support for giving us one every year. Why? Because
all of the other teams hate coming to Pullman in November. It's cold, especially if it's a night game. Usually means a bus ride, probably the worst hotels they stay in all season, and generally more trouble than it's worth. If the rest of the conference could get a guarantee that they'd never have to come to Pullman during the last two weeks of November, I think they'd jump at it.
But, the downside is that we lose attendance no matter how we slice it. Consider this:
AC moves into late October/early November. It's now typically within 2 weeks of Homecoming on one side and 2 weeks of Dad's weekend on the other. AC probably remains a true sellout, but in most years we'll lose from Homecoming/Dad's Weekend at least as much as we gain at AC.
Additionally...we already struggle to pull crowds at games in November, especially when they're back-to-back, or when they're on Saturday before Thanksgiving. We drew an announced 22,400 for the Arizona game last season (which was a very generous number), and 25,121 for Colorado in 2015 (the last time we played Saturday in a road AC year...and also a generous number). This was with teams that were 9-1 and 7-3. If we were playing an FCS team that weekend - even Idaho - we'd be looking at 15K. Or less. And who wants to have Senior Day in a half-empty stadium?
So, we gain a couple thousand (at most) butts in the seats for AC. We likely lose some from Homecoming and Dad's weekend, and we lose 7-10,000 for playing Idaho in November. And then what if AC
is Homecoming or Dad's Weekend? Now we lose even more.