Stuck

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Dec 05, 20190

On a Saturday last August in Pullman, a Lentil Festival parade entry rounded the corner of Main Street. A scattering of claps rose. Was it a small, unfamiliar non-profit? The Pullman junior soccer league kids? The Rising Stars Dance Studio?

It was the Washington State Cougars football team, coming off an 11-win season.

If you closed your eyes, or bent down to tie your shoe as they passed, you wouldn't have known it.

Why?

Why the muted reception for this team? It was similar to other recent years of the parade, including after WSU turned a major corner for a 9-4 season in 2015.

The reason may suggest an overall assessment of things seven years into the Mike Leach era.

First, at what point does his monologue after last Friday’s Apple Cup not call for a comment from Kirk Schulz?

After all, as the president of the university, Schulz has to think of his predecessor – how he handled things, and how it will be viewed into the future.

In 2011-2012, the late Elson Floyd ultimately bought the notion that WSU needed expenditures of $120-million-plus (and Mike Leach) in order to “compete” again. The deal was simple. The program traded its can-do charm – or at least can-did – for massive debt, an office park stadium, enough polish to put that charm away for good, and a coach we just can't get behind, regardless if you think his analysis of whether a hot dog is a sandwich is funny.

And while Kirk Schulz has to think of the specter of Elson Floyd, Coach Leach has to now think of the specter of Mike Price.

Leach is getting near fair-comparison-time to Price, the aw-shucks guy WSU found at Weber State and paid a middling salary for 13 years (and two Rose Bowls).

But Leach goes to a bowl every year, people say.

And...? There are 40 bowls now.

The point is to have a program that can finish out any one year. This is what’s missing.

If you finish a year, show up against U.W. and go to a Rose Bowl, then follow it with two or three down years, that's far more meaningful than a program which remains good or pretty good every year, but never great, never bad – all the while led by a coach who is supposed to be funny and likeable but is closer to the opposite.

So Schulz and the university are stuck.

They can continue the see-no-problem, hear-no-problem, or they can do this:

Acknowledge that going to a bowl at 6-6 means nothing. Assign the Apple Cup problem to the entire psychology department to study. Kirk Schulz, think about the front porch of the university now offering (sour) greetings from Mike Leach sitting there in a pair of cargo shorts.

And remind the coach that for all his “genius,” success, money and facilities, he could very well still be getting beat by some guy from Weber State.

Garth Meyer, Reporter