Happy Monday Cougs, hope you are ready for the holiday weekend ahead. And wow, brrrr, it’s cold out in the great Northwest! You have to wonder what that 4 PM kickoff for the Apple Cup in a couple of weeks is going to feel like. Hint – BUNDLE UP, and keep the hot cocoa and whatever you choose to add to it, flowing!
So the John Blanchette article has stirred things up a bit, wouldn’t you say? Not exactly breaking news, but, if you haven’t heard, the Spokesman columnist wrote an opinion piece yesterday on the Paul Wulff “situation”. The column basically states that the Moos silence on the matter is not exactly interpreted as good news for the return of Paul Wulff:
In an AD’s tradition both proud and silly, Moos has repeatedly said that the football program, including Wulff’s status, will – all together now – be evaluated at the end of the season. This is done at every Hot Seat U., purportedly to calm the unrest of the torch-and-tar faction, which of course it does not at all. There is also some flapdoodle about preserving the student-athletes’ best interests, which somehow wasn’t a concern when the bye week scheduled earlier was sold off to pay another administrator.
Anyway, here’s a bulletin for the athletic director: The season is over.
Yes, the Apple Cup remains. But for all purposes, what needed to be seen has been seen.
I don’t know how much we want to pile on here, you know what I mean? All we know is that Moos has said, publicly, all season long, that 1) this is our coaching staff during the season, and we always support the current coaching staff; 2) we will fully evaluate the coaching staff at the end of the season. Period. Sure, he’s added on that he thinks Wulff has the program moving in the right direction, that sort of thing. And he has to be proud after the Cougs beat Oregon State, as well as the strong All-Academic placement of the football program announced last week. All things that are good signs for a trying to dig out of a deep, dark hole by completely changing the culture of a fledgling program.
The problem, though, is the silence. It’s human nature to interpret when we don’t know the facts. There are some out there who claim to have close ties to Bill Moos, or have sources here and there who are hearing things. But we don’t really know, and outside of Bill Moos, President Floyd and a select few, noboby really knows what is going to happen. But it’s the silence that can cause some damage along the way.
It happens in relationships with poor communication all the time. It happens at workplaces, when management either sends mixed signals or chooses to not address certain things altogether. And silence on the Paul Wulff matter just leads to speculation about what’s really going on. We are emotional beings, and we tend to fill in the blanks, you know what I mean? Sprinkle in some Mike Bellotti rumors here and there (and FYI, Bellotti just removed himself from the Colorado discussion yesterday), and you have the forum for a field day for rumor-mongering.
It is simply the situation we are in, and it’s as simple as that. Until Moos publicly proclaims that Wulff will be back for 2011 – and beyond? – all we are left to do is speculate on what is going to happen. That’s what silence/non-commital remarks will get you.
Here’s the thing though. Like many of you, I listened to the Moos weekly radio show a week ago, the Monday after the Oregon State win. I expected him to lob huge praise on Wulff and the staff for the victory, and wouldn’t have been surprised in the least if Moos would have chosen that moment then and there to say that Wulff has shown enough in the body of work to warrant another season. But that’s the emotional fan in me thinking that, not the rational, big-picture guy that Bill Moos has to be.
In fact, Bud Nameck asked him flat-out if the win helped quiet the critics on Wulff, and if it would end speculation that he wouldn’t be back. But what did Moos say? While happy with the win, well, he really didn’t say anything new that we haven’t already heard all along. That the head coach and the staff in general would be evaluated after the season, and right now we are getting ready for the Apple Cup as if it was a bowl game, we have a big hoops game the Friday of Apple Cup, etc, etc, etc.
So when given the opportunity to throw a huge, heaping pile of support behind Wulff? Instead he carefully sidestepped the question. Again.
One criticism has been that if Moos doesn’t make a decision immediately, that recruiting would suffer. But have you seen the latest list of commitments? 19 verbals to Washington State, and while a few are “soft” or whatever, that’s actually normal for any program at this point. We’re nearly to December and there is uncertainty around the future of the coaching staff, but they still have 19 verbals. Compare that number to when Doba was let go after a 5-7 season, where Doba has THREE commits at the end of the season?! Night and day difference, isn’t it? So you really have to wonder if this so-called “non-decision” has had any influence whatsoever on the pipeline of talent to lovely Pullman!
Bill Moos, if nothing else, has held to his word that there would be nothing announced until after the season. The door has been wide open for him to say something, either way, and he has carefully chosen his words. So when you have these kinds of things, what else are WE supposed to do but be left with our own speculation about what’s going to happen? This isn’t just going to go away either, not until we have the end of the season and there is an announcement either way. So, like it or not, this is the situation we are in.
At this point, what do you think? Has Moos handled this thing correctly? Should he have stated already one way or another what is going to happen? Or maybe he’s meant what he said all along, that he wants to wait until the end of the year to figure this thing out. Isn’t that what he’s actually DOING right now?
I would imagine that on Sunday December 5th, we’ll have our answer. Maybe even the night of December 4th we’ll know what’s up. But like it not, until then, we have to wait it out.
That’s it for now. Enjoy your Monday, and as always, GO COUGS!
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