Well, what can you say? The Times story has broken, and it’s not pretty. Top-fold, front-page Seattle Times story about the struggles of your football program isn’t a good Sunday. Granted we’re at a point in time today that newspapers are in big trouble, and bad news sells papers (if it bleeds, it leads, etc). And I don’t care what anyone says, this story is to help placate some cranky UW’ers when their program was dragged through the mud for the scathing ’00 Rose Bowl champions run afoul of the law.
But I have to admit it…..I thought this would be worse. Yes, like all of you, I’m disappointed by what appears to be a program with kids making far too many mistakes in the Bill Doba era. Yes, Doba himself admits that they really blew it after the Holiday Bowl, getting “too big for our britches” or something along those lines. And Bill Doba looked the other way, ran too loose of a ship, etc. But was much of any of this stuff actually new “news”?
Now, obviously DUI’s are no laughing matter. Drive hammered, get nailed. DUI’s are big mistakes that kill a lot of people every year, and the penalties for such things should be severe, no matter the individual or the circumstances. And I was surprised about Mattingly drilling another kid with a frying pan (WTF?). That was a little weird. Then again, one of his friends had his teeth knocked out. Not to totally defend the action, but Mattingly was doing what a lot of kids that age do, which was to seek retribution for his friend. Stupid? Yes. Does it happen? All the time.
But all that said, was there anything that blew you away? Maybe all the bad news this offseason has made us numb to everything? No cover-ups by Whitman county prosecutors. No grades being changed by crooked administrators or coaches. No murder, rape, or weapons possessions. No plasma TV’s, $50,000 loans, illegal gifts to players, illegal recruiting practices or anything else that happens at a lot of other schools.
That said, the article is, overall, an embarrassment. It’s something that the coaches are going to have to address on the recruiting trail when Mom and Pops ask what was that all about. Wulff has said it since day one, that there is a real culture change needed on a variety of levels. He wasn’t kidding was he??
The thing I didn’t like most of all was what Courtney Williams had to say:
“WSU is a hard school to go to, man,” Williams says. “You ain’t got nothin’ to do but get drunk and smoke weed, and not go to class because you’re too tired from doing what you’re doing.”
Ouch.
And Leon Burtnett basically laid it out that we are the little brother in-state, never once in his time at WSU getting a player over UW. We have the built-in disadvantages, we have the small market, small stadium, blah blah blah. But again, nothing that we haven’t heard before, right?
But yet, you have to consider the individual as well. Aren’t people, even young men, at least accountable for their actions? Do angels come to WSU and suddenly transform into drunken, weed-smoking thugs looking to fight? Of course not. Is there something to the idea that there can be some slow times in Pullman, especially if you are from an inner-city situation and used to the bright lights? Absolutely. As the old saying goes, “idle hands do the devil’s work”. In other words, boys with little supervision and extra time on their hands can be a less-than-ideal situation! But the individual needs to figure that out and do the right thing, and the majority of them have figured out how to do just that.
But on that theme, Hooty weighed in on what was coming, and it is a perspective of reality:
‘Thankfully Andy Roof “only” broke that guy’s face. We can still fall back on the “at least our football players haven’t killed anyone” argument.
Rubbing alcohol mixed into contact solution? Is that really much worse than peeing in someone’s half-filled pitcher under the table at the Coug? We’re probably ALL guilty of that, right? Are you with me? Guys? Jen?
Fights on Greek Row are certainly no cause for alarm. I’d probably worry if there WEREN’T a scrape or two every now and then. I myself was once sucker-punched by Calvin Griggs. It’s part of life on a college campus.
Here’s the thing…
Every position in football (with a couple obvious exceptions) REQUIRES that in addition to physical skill, players have the ability to turn to a source of rage to get them through the battles of the game. Chris Spielman used to line up and look across the line, imagining the guys on the other side raping his wife and hurting his family. He said at times he’d have tears in his eyes when the ball was snapped. Is that healthy? No, but it’s what allowed him to play with rage.
One could make the argument without making too much of a stretch, that it’s unreasonable to expect an individual to completely harness that rage and limit it to the football field. It’s not a far cry from training a soldier to kill; send him off to war to do what he was trained to do; and then have him come home and immediately blend right back into life as we know it. It doesn’t make sense.
Before anyone throws a college-aged football player under the bus and passes judgment on him, they should first try and understand what it takes to actually play the game of football at this level; and then think back to when they were in college and all the stupid shit they did and got away with, because they weren’t subject to the scrutiny of the media.
What did the Times accomplish with their series on UW? Nothing. Water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. It all happened at a different time, under different leadership. As far as the program was concerned, they had moved on. The only thing shocking about that story was the preferrential treatment some of those guys received from the judicial system. THAT’S your real story.
Just like UW, we too have moved on, so take your best shot while you have the chance. “
Finally, it’s not all bad. It only seems that way from the article. It was very lightly touched on, but for example, the team currently has a GPA of 2.72, highest in 30 years. Alex Brink was a model student and claims that the support systems are in place, but in the end the individual needs to be accountable for their own actions. They already cut ties to a kid that was looking like a potential problem in Calvin Schmidtke. And coach Wulff has already created a new approach, implementing something called the “Unity Council”, consisting of 16 players that will sit in judgment against players who make mistakes. They will recommend punishment from missing classes and meetings to more serious criminal charges.
More than anything else, Wulff has a personal stake in all this. Not only is he the head coach at a place he’s always wanted to be, but as a former player and student, this is HIS school, HIS team. I think Jim Sterk said it best in his e-mail:
“Although the attitude and behavior of our football student-athletes is not in a crisis situation, there is room for improvement,” WSU athletic director Jim Sterk said in an e-mail last week to boosters to brace them for today’s story. “While there are no quick fixes, the program is heading in the right direction.”
We should certainly acknowledge the mistakes, and not downplay them. They happened. But the focus should be on what happens today and tomorrow. At least now the stuff is out in the open and the coaches and administrators can talk about the things that are going right. But this is hardly a program that is out of control. And for that matter, don’t fully dwell on what went wrong yesterday. Today is all you can control anyway.
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