According to Dennis Green “We are NOT who we thought we were.”
Yesterday Bill Moos stepped to the podium and did something unprecedented in Cougar history. He fired a coach whose team was improving. I don’t think I’ve made any secret of the fact that I am a big supporter of what Paul Wulff has done here at WSU. While I do not support the decision Moos made yesterday, I do empathize with the position he is in, and I completely understand why he felt compelled to make a change.
I was at the first practices in the summer of 2008 and I can tell you that the team Wulff inherited was a complete and utter disgrace. With dogged determination Wulff and his staff set about changing every single thing about the culture of WSU football. There was a lot that had to be done off the field before any visible results were seen on the field and there was no glory in the work that had to be done. At the end of the day we hired a member of the family to come in and clean up after a house fire, and as soon as the house was all clean, rebuilt, shiny and new, we kicked him out and handed the keys over to a stranger to throw the house warming party. It’s a shame and it goes against everything we Coug fans always claim (so loudly) to be about. Apparently now we are all about winning at ‘Ol Wazzu. How we win and who we win with are no longer our concern and if that’s the case we can finally put to bed all the hollow, empty rhetoric about how we’re different and a “family”. As I told Amieable last night, the next person who says “once a Coug, always a Coug’ within ear shot of me is going to hate the next 20 minutes of their life.
In the comments yesterday I stated that this was not a “football decision”, but rather a decision based on the current state of the fan base. When Moos spoke it was clear he had been reading my comments throughout the day because that is exactly what he said. Basically, Cougar nation, Paul Wulff is not the problem with Cougar Football. We are. Donations, ticket sales, facilities, these are the things that are holding the football program back, not Paul Wulff and his staff. These are things that are OUR responsibility as fans. When Moos spoke yesterday he didn’t have a single negative thing to say about the work Paul Wulff was doing as football coach, but instead he held a big mirror up to the Cougar nation and told us all to take a good long look and be honest about what we see. His message was clear… if you are not a donor, we need you to be and if you are already a donor we need you to double what you are giving. I am in the fund raising business and that was as bold an ask as I have ever heard. Of course, as usual, this message was completely lost on the ignorant masses. For all our internet forum bluster, flag waving and fan poll prowess the bottom line is we are the last place fan base in the Pac-12. We all need Tommy John surgery from all the patting ourselves on the back for our “Cougar Spirit” and “Cougar Pride” and other made-up nonsense that doesn’t do anything at all to help our team. In every measurable, tangible way that fans support their teams, we are dead last. Period.
Moos also pleaded with us to get our butts into the seats. From the 1997 Stanford game with over 40,000 crammed into Martin, to this year’s Utah game with a mere 16,000 of us hearty souls braving the blizzard conditions, I have seen the ebbs and flows of the Cougar Nation and I fear labels like “fair weather” or “front runner” may aptly apply. I have also visited the places that we aspire to compete with, Auburn, Wisconsin, Oregon, Colorado, and I can tell you this, Coug fans; No matter our record, if you live within a day’s drive of Martin Stadium… whatever your excuse is for not having season tickets would not fly in any of those places.
This amazing effort by Coug fans won us 0 games.
Make no mistake, our apathy is the emergency that Moos is addressing with the upcoming coaching change, not the situation on the football team. This is his hail Mary play to finally awaken a fan base that set the standard for apathy when they slumbered through four 10 win seasons in seven years without significantly increasing their support of the football program. I am confident that in the next couple days Moos will hire a coach that will make national headlines and send the Cougfan message boards and our comments threads into celebratory hysteria. Of course, by doing so, he is calling on all of us to step up and prove that we are worthy of it. World class coaching, world class athletes, world class facilities… these are all on the way. The only thing missing is a world class fan base. In other words, we are close to getting what we want, but we certainly haven’t earned it.
Today I am as disappointed as I have ever been as a Coug fan. I think firing Paul Wulff is an appalling betrayal of a loyal and courageous fellow Coug who has worked tirelessly to rescue our football program from a total disaster and restore it to something we can be proud of. But despite that, Amieable and I are sending off a check today to the WSU Athletic Foundation for $100.00. Sure, we do not agree with the decision yesterday, but unlike so many of our fellow Coug fans the last couple years, we are NOT going to withhold our support just because we didn’t get our way. We have to be better fans than that. This is a critical time for our program and we need to seize this moment with much more than high fives and internet comments. We need to show our new coach that we are serious about success at Wazzu and willing to match our demands on our coaches with demands of ourselves.
Who’s with us?
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