WSU Football, Post Jim Sterk

1) Coach Paul Wulff was hired in December 2007 by Jim Sterk.
2) Paul Wulff went 3 – 22 his first two seasons on the Palouse.  Whether or not this was his fault or his predecessor Bill Doba’s fault is up for debate.
3) Jim Sterk left WSU on February 12th, 2010.
4) President Elson Floyd is said to not be a fan of Wulff’s.  Sterk was going to stand by Wulff and the remaining year’s on his contract.
5) A new Athletic Director, not named Bill Moos or John Johnson, will have zero loyalties to Wulff.  Moos and Johnson were members of the search committee who endorsed the hire of Wulff.

These are the facts.  Read on to see what the crystal ball has in store….

Like many of you, I received the email from the Office of President Floyd, indicating Senior Associate Athletic Director / Senior Woman Administrator Anne McCoy has agreed to serve as interim athletic director.  Also in the email was a note that a lot of emails have come his direction indicating a strong preference for the return of Bill Moos to a seat in Bohler Gym.  Here are some of the key details of the email:

In recent days I have received a number of messages from Cougar supporters indicating an interest in Bill Moos as a candidate for the athletic director position. In light of that sentiment, I have invited him to visit the Pullman campus on Wednesday, February 17. Bill is well known within the Cougar family and in athletic circles across the country. He will meet with the senior leadership of the athletic department Wednesday morning. He will then hold a series of meetings with coaches and athletic staff throughout the day and take part in a public forum with members of the university community from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Room T101 of the Food Sciences and Human Nutrition Building on the Pullman campus.

To me this screams WSU’s number one choice is Bill Moos, which is excellent news for Wulff, as Moos is one of the individuals who recommended him for the post.  I would imagine the second choice would be John Johnson, who came to WSU in 2004, and was recently a finalist for the AD job at UNLV.

If neither of the two aforementioned men become the next AD for WSU, I think Wulff has less than 10 months from today on the job, and here is why: WSU will not win more than 4 games next year (Sidenote: I will take the over on whatever www.sportsbook.com offers as the total number of wins for 2010, just in case they get lucky.)  This number of wins will be unacceptable to any AD, not named Moos or Johnson, as they will want their own guy leading the program.  Whether or not that is fair isn’t up to me, but here is my take as to why it would be bad.

In my mind, Wazzu is in the same boat as Arizona and Oregon State when it comes to building successful football programs.  We will never have the luster of recruiting 4 and 5 star talents like Oregon, UW, UCLA, USC, Cal and ASU.  So these three teams have to rely on 1, 2, 3 and the occasional 4 star prospect and go from there.  What the administration at Arizona and Oregon State has allowed Mike Stoops and Mike Riley to do is just that.  It may not have been sexy at the beginning, but those two coaches have recruited talented kids who have bought in to the programs, and left as 5 star talents (see Mike Haas and Rob Gronkowski).

It took these coaches many years to right the previous coach’s wrongs.  Stoops didn’t lead Arizona to a winning record and a bowl game until his fifth year on the job, while Riley needed three seasons (spread across two stints) to reach his first winning season and bowl game at Oregon State.
Being patient with a losing team sucks.  We all want to win, now.

Especially when the Huskies are winning.

But being patient did prove to work with Dick Bennett.
The best advice I have for whomever our new Athletic Director is, is to follow the advice of this guy.

Or at least if you don’t believe me, listen to Jim Walden’s take.

Cougs, we need to stay the course.

All for now.  GO COUGS!