There was a major buzz in the small college town of Pullman over the weekend. It was almost the exact opposite of what Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi had felt after the planet Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star. It was as if millions of voices had cried out in pure joy instead of terror.

But then, much like the doomed inhabitants of the make-believe Star Wars planet, all of our voices were silenced by the Galactic Empire known as ESPN.

As I’m sure many of you know, ESPN’s College GameDay was in talks to come to WSU for this weekend’s football game against Stanford. The Cougars are 5-2 for the first time in more than a decade, and Stanford is a top-ten team. The winner of this game will be a favorite to claim the Pac-12 North Division crown. It’s a primetime matchup, and it looked to be WSU’s best chance to host GameDay in the near future.

After hours of anxiously waiting and refreshing Twitter feeds waiting for the news, the hearts of Cougar fans around the world were ruthlessly shattered. ESPN’s flagship college football program decided not to come to Washington State this Halloween. Instead, it’s taking its crews to Philadelphia for the Temple-Notre Dame game.

I’m sure Temple-Notre Dame will be a fine game, and would probably deserve the honor any other week. Notre Dame is talented, ranked ninth in the country, and has brand recognition that is unmatched by 95 percent of other college football teams. Their only loss came earlier in the year against No. 3 Clemson.

Temple is ranked and undefeated for the first time since the ‘70s. Philly’s rich history will provide ESPN with great promo material to work with. The setting should be stunning.

But the Owls play in the relatively unheard-of American Athletic Conference and have played teams like the Massachusetts Minutemen and the Charlotte 49ers. No, those aren’t Arena Football League teams; apparently those are universities that have real-life football programs.

And Notre Dame is Notre Dame. The last important thing the football team did was act as the setting for the movie “Rudy.” Or do you want me to bring up the 2013 National Championship game against Alabama, where the Fighting Irish were beaten into the Whimpering Irish? I didn’t think so.

However, this really isn’t about bad-mouthing either of those teams. This is about Washington State.

After the Cougars upset Arizona on the road last weekend, fans were convinced that ESPN would finally acknowledge WSU and send its crews to Pullman. They took to social media and mentioned ESPN and College GameDay in thousands of tweets; created fan pages on Facebook to try and raise support; and basically nagged ESPN’s social media team as much as they could.

Plus, WSU has become a staple on GameDay over the last decade or so. Each week the Cougar flag known as Ol’ Crimson travels around the country to the site of each GameDay. This tradition has gone on for 171 games without fail. ESPN has recognized this incredible feat on numerous occasions. Yet all of this still wasn’t enough.

I recognize WSU has been an awful football program for many years, and it did start the season with a loss to Division-IAA Portland State. But now that the team has a little bit of success, it feels wrong that ESPN chose not to recognize WSU by sending GameDay to Pullman.

Company officials constantly say on social media how impressed they are by the Cougar faithful, and that they will have to come to Washington State “sometime in the near future.”

But when will they come? When will the scenario be better than it is now? This is a Halloween night game against a powerhouse team on the heels of one of the best winning streaks in recent memory. The story writes itself.

How much longer can Cougar fans be expected to wait to be recognized? How many more Pac-12 player of the week honors does the team need to accumulate while they sit and watch ESPN pander to the big-name schools?

This is about more than a TV show. It’s about the respect this Cougar team and its fans feel they deserve from the rest of country. Yes, they may have been a joke for many years, but now things have changed, not just in the football program, but in the university as a whole.

So enjoy your stay in Philadelphia, ESPN. Washington State will just keep winning without you.