Greetings Cougar Nation. Hope you’re having a great start to your week.
Well, as we firmly enter game week, it is now time to wrap-up the highly irrelevant and overdrawn saga known as “Out of the Cellar.”
In Part One of this mega-drama, we provided a back drop of the difficulty facing both Washington schools as each tries to re-build in an already stacked Pac-10 conference. In Part Two, we provided a snap shot (cough! cough!) of the different philosophies that each program is taking to their respective re-building efforts. And today, in Part Three, we provide a take on what we think will happen to both programs over the coming years.
So, here we go down the home stretch…
Washington State University Cougars
As you all know, one of the topics that has been “on again/off again” on this blog for the past several months has been the Martin Stadium renovation campaign. As we have detailed here many times, the renovation of Martin Stadium is important for several reasons—the most immediate being that both Oregon schools, plus Stanford, and now CAL (forthcoming), have completed MAJOR facilities upgrades.
Obviously, those upgrades matter for recruiting. But for WSU, facilities matter for reasons above and beyond that—because they represent the pillar of the athletic program’s ability to generate revenue. So, whether you like Cougar FOOTBALL, basketball, baseball, track, and so on, what happens to Martin Stadium should matter a whole lot to you.
You see, revenues generated from College Football often represent at least 80% of the revenue for the entire budget of an athletic department. So, finding structural ways to make football as solvent as possible is the #1 priority for any major college athletic director. Then, when you factor in that recent budget cuts have decreased state aid for athletic scholarships, then you can see further how revenue created by football gate is so central to the health and well-being of WSU’s ability to field the requisite number of team sports required by the Pac-10 in competitive ways.
And so, when we hear Jim Sterk talk about threats regarding our status in the Pac-10, what he is referring to is the fiscal threat facing our Athletic Department should we not be able to generate the kind of revenue needed to field a full slate of competitive teams in the Conference.
Consequently, renovating Martin Stadium not only helps Football directly, it also helps it indirectly by helping the baseball program continue to develop into a consistent NCAA contender. It keeps the track program as a relevant force on the national scene. And, it helps further the development of both Men’s and Women’s basketball—which has perhaps a greater chance in the short term to generate the regional and national exposure needed to enhance the university’s overall profile and visibility (and yes, for a school like WSU that many have never heard of—that recognition makes a difference in recruiting AND giving).
Put plainly, a successful Phase III brings in more money, keeps assistant coaches in all sports at the school (especially guys like Chris Ball and Ben Johnson) from jumping ship, and generates more exposure for the university that can help WSU further develop a regional or national reputation for being a solid, scrappy, thorn-in-the-side Pac-10 school.
Therefore, assuming that the AD’s office is able to move forward with some of the campaign’s more interesting and innovative aspects (to be revealed here soon on this blog), I happen to believe that the renovation is going to get done—and soon.
Moreover, assuming that Paul Wulff can get a competent quarterback for the 2010-2011 season (and that we don’t super-tank it this year), then the Cougs have real promise to compete for a 6 or 7 win season (and thus a bowl game) in 2010. And if we do, then we will have found our formula for lifting ourselves out of the Pac-10’s lower tier every couple of years. And that will be enough to satisfy the fan base, recruits, university admin, and so forth—even if yahoos like myself bitch and moan throughout the likely 5-7 season we are bound to experience??
University of Washington
While WSU struggles to find the final millions to complete the Martin Stadium Renovation, the University of Washington is also facing a MASSIVE facilities need. However, unlike Martin Stadium, the ills facing Muttlake cannot be solved through simple renovation alone. Instead, there is a pretty strong consensus out there that Husky Stadium needs a complete do-over—THEY NEED TO TEAR HUSKY STADIUM DOWN TO THE GROUND.
Plus, when you factor in that a new Husky Stadium will have to house at least 80,000+ purple and gold clad morons, you can see the ENORMOUS difference in scale (and cost) between the two efforts. And THAT, my friends, is the primary reason for the UW’s ridiculous uproar during last year’s legislative melee: It’s a daunting project that will take literally hundreds of millions to fund (and for seven dates a year) at a time when the economy stinks and the University of Oregon has supermodels feeding football players grapes while they lie on taping benches that happen to double as Tempurpedic mattresses. Get the drift?
So, when you look at the task facing Sark and company, you have the following MAJOR pillars working against them over the next three to four years:
1) They are DEAD LAST in the pecking order of schools that seek out 4 to 5 star athletes.
2) Their facilities are DEAD LAST in the pecking order of Pac-10 schools that seek 4 to 5 star athletes.
3) Their coach has very little program development experience (read: NONE).
4) They need to win early to create the type of momentum needed to remove barriers/impressions 1-3.
Because of the sheer enormity of the barriers in front of him, I think that Dawg fans will soon be quite disappointed to find out that Steve Sarkisian is not “the man” or savior that they thought he was going to be. Instead, I think that Sark is going to be a transitional coach—the guy that will pave the way for later program success (like Ty Willingham was initially for Charlie Weis).
So, while the Dawgs will not be down for much longer, their journey out of the cellar and into the upper tier of the conference is going to take a bit longer than what they want. However, before we all get too filled with glee, sometime in the next 3-5 years, the Tyee Club is going to come up with the scratch needed to replace Husky Stadium with a modern multi-million dollar gem stone (think Qwest Field, only a slightly downscaled version). And when they do, they’ll be able to leverage the foundation of solid recruits that Sark amassed during his tenure to hire a true 5 star coach who will return the Dawgs to conference contention in a major way.
So, unless Sark gets through early (as in this year or next), look for our Cougs to do more than hold our own against our mean older brother for the next five to six years. But after that, Muttlake will return. And when it does, we’ll all be able to rejoice every other year about beating the Huskies when they are something other than a perpetual also ran. And maybe at that time, both schools will be consistently “Out of the Cellar.”
Now, let’s go out there an win more than 3 games this year, shall we????
With Love,
Osho Rojo
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