Last week SBN Seattle contributor Brian Floyd urged observers to look past the Washington State Cougars football struggles and focus on the youth movement.
The Cougs simply haven't been competitive at all since 2008, with games regularly being out of hand before the end of the first quarter. Fans are calling for his head, confidence in the program is low and the media has declared him "on the hot seat".
What needs to be highlighted is the process that Wulff is taking as he attempts to build a program at Washington State. Wulff inherited a mess when he took over in 2008. The Cougs had a lack of talent to go along with a glaring lack of discipline. Players were being arrested left-and-right, with program discipline at an all-time low.
Wulff stepped in and began cleaning house. In an effort to rebuild the program, the new head coach set out to restore integrity and demand accountability in a program that lost its way during the high-point of its success on the field. The winning seasons and bowl games in the early 2000s were great, but somewhere along the way Washington State strayed from the formula that made them so successful -- find undervalued talent and develop them in a disciplined system.
One person who apparently didn't get this memo is none other than Washington State University Athletic Director Bill Moos, according to Barry Bolton at Scout's Cougfan.com. Bolton writes...
Bill Moos, on Cougar Calls with Bill Moos, heard every Monday morning at 10 a.m. with host Bud Nameck on Spokane's 700 AM ESPN The Ticket, said that Paul Wulff was doing a good job in recruiting, that he's WSU's football coach in 2010 and that he needs to be supported by the fans.
"Like I've always done every place, I assess every coach's job at the end of the season, when we have our talk - that's whether they've gone undefeated or they haven't won a game," said Moos. "There was no hidden meaning in that.
"There ain't going to be another coach in 2010 so let's support the one we've got... At the end of 2010, we'll do what I've always done, we'll discuss what needs to be improved, what went well and we'll go from there."
Jeff Nusser at SB Nation's CougCenter writes that the reference to 2010 only was no accident.
Now, this is not the first rodeo for Bill Moos. He is a man who chooses his words carefully, and he also generally does not mince them. So ears rightly perked up regarding both what was said (2010) and what was not said (anything beyond that).
That ringing endorsement Jim Walden has been longing for? I sure as heck don't see it anywhere in there. In fact, saying let's support the one we've got because it ain't changing? That's about as low a bar for support as there is. Again, it's not so much what he said, but what he didn't say. And that speaks louder than any of these words possibly could, because he could have put an end to all of this by publicly declaring that he's 100 percent behind Wulff and that he'll certainly return for his fourth season.
This will almost certainly not end well.
On the bright side, at least Wulff's got job security for the next three of four months, right?
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