[12] After the war ended, Phil Sarboe was hired away from Lincoln High School in Tacoma to return to his alma mater as the head coach.

[16] Jim Sutherland was Washington State's 21st head football coach and led the program for eight seasons, through 1963,[18] with an overall record of 37–39–4 (.488).

[18] Previously an assistant at rival Washington, Bert Clark was WSU's head coach for four seasons,[19] posting an overall record of 15–24–1 (.388).

[19] His best season was his second in 1965, when the WSU "Cardiac Kids" went 7–3;[19] they defeated three Big Ten teams on the road,[20] but lost to rivals Idaho and Washington.

[24] Warren Powers, an assistant from Nebraska, also stayed for just one season (1977),[25] then returned to the Big Eight Conference as head coach at Missouri.

[27][28] Players coached by Walden at WSU include Jack Thompson, Kerry Porter, Rueben Mayes, Ricky Turner, Ricky Reynolds, Paul Sorensen, Brian Forde, Lee Blakeney, Mark Rypien, Dan Lynch, Pat Beach, Keith Millard, Erik Howard, and Cedrick Brown.

[34][32] Former Cougar player and assistant Mike Price returned to Pullman in 1989; he was previously the head coach for eight years at Weber State in Ogden, Utah.

[35] Price led the Cougars to unprecedented success, taking his 1997 and 2002 teams to the Rose Bowl, both times losing.

[35] The 1997 team was led by star quarterback Ryan Leaf, the second overall pick in the 1998 NFL draft by the San Diego Chargers.

[35][37] It was during the 2002 season that Washington State received its highest ranking ever in the modern era in the AP Poll at No.

[35] Price left after the Rose Bowl for Alabama,[35] but was fired before ever coaching a game for the Crimson Tide, due to an off-the-field incident in the spring.

[42] Wulff struggled mightily as the WSU head coach, failing to win more than four games in a single season.

After the suicide of projected starting quarterback Tyler Hilinski in January 2018,[56] graduate transfer Gardner Minshew from East Carolina was recruited by Leach to fill the void.

Minshew and other veteran players, such as sixth-year linebacker Peyton Pelluer, rallied the team in honor of their former teammate Hilinski and led Washington State to a memorable season for Cougar football fans.

Less than a week after Leach's departure, athletic director Pat Chun announced the hire of Hawaii head coach Nick Rolovich.

[57] On October 18, 2021, he was fired for refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccination in compliance with Washington's state employee mandate.

Rolovich subsequently filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the university, Chun, and Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

[59] Under Dickert's leadership, the Cougars fought to a 3–2 record, including a 40–13 victory over rival Washington in the 113th Apple Cup, snapping a seven-game losing streak in the rivalry.

The Cougars would get an invite to the LA Bowl where they would lose to the 9–4 Fresno State Bulldogs 29–6 leaving them with a final record of 7–6 for the 2022 season.

While they started out 4-0, the 2023–24 season ended up being a step back in terms of success with them going 5–7 and missing out on getting an invite to a bowl game.

Jake Dickert was hired by Wake Forest to take over that school's football program in December 2024 just days prior to the Cougars playing in the 2024 Holiday Bowl.

They were invited to the Tournament East-West football game, now known as the 1916 Rose Bowl, where they defeated Brown University, now an FCS team, 14–0.

NCAA-designated major selectors have retroactively variously named Cornell, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Pittsburgh champions or co-champions for the 1915 college football season.

[67] In 2014, Washington State Senate Resolution 8715 recognized the team as national champions on the season's 99th anniversary.

From 2015 through 2019, the Cougars made five consecutive bowl appearances for the first time in program history, all under head coach Mike Leach.

[72]: 114 The two land-grant universities are less than eight miles (13 km) apart on the rural Palouse in the Inland Northwest; the University of Idaho campus in Moscow is nearly on the Idaho–Washington border, and Washington State's campus is directly west, on the east side of Pullman, linked by Washington State Route 270 and the Bill Chipman Palouse Trail.

The series has been played intermittently since 1978, It was revived as an annual game for a full decade (1998–2007) and the Cougars won eight of the ten.

Mike Price is the first and only coach in the Washington State football program history to have received this distinguished award.

Mike Leach is the first and only coach in the Washington State football program history to have received this distinguished award.

[93] On November 1, 2024, it was announced that the Cougars will be playing an independent football schedule next season which also includes a home and home series with fellow Pac-12 Conference member Oregon State, due to the Mountain West Conference not extending the scheduling agreement that was in place for the 2024 season.