Plenty of Cougar fans bought season tickets and shelled out donations but what is getting lost in all of this Mike Leach madness is how WSU royally jobbed Paul Wulff.
Lets flash back to when Wulff was hired as the Cougars head coach. Bill Doba had apparently "recruited kids" by going to Pullman middle schools and asking who wanted to play football. WSU had come off a few uninspiring seasons but still were competitive with Mike Pryce era recruits.
But all those seniors graduated and Wulff had nothing in the cupboard.
When Wulff was at Eastern Washington he was heralded as a great recruiter but it wasn't like he called a fantastic playcaller (like Beau Baldwin) or anything like that. I don't think anybody could argue anything else. He ran a program and had he coordinators take care of what they needed to take care of. However, Wulff essentially had Doba's rejects to deal with and he had to go against Pac-10 competition.
He finally gets his recruits in and the teams shows signs of improvement and they pull the rug out from under him. Even though he was probably the cheapest coach in the Pac-12 and one of the hardest working ones. Factor in that WSU will use the new Pac-12 TV money to pay Leach and it may have been something planned all along.
"Hey lets get an alum to coach the team because they're going to be absolutely awful with Doba's recruits, he's a good recruiter and he'll fill the roster with kids and once the boosters call for his head we can use the TV money to buy a big splash name."
Either way, it worked out perfectly for WSU and not so perfectly for Paul Wulff. Leach will win with his recruits next year. With Connor Halliday at the helm of this team - boy, things will be crazy in Pullman.
I mean if you win nine games in four years, you can't expect to have job security but WSU is a midmajor-level athletic program (in terms of facilities, financial support, ect.) competing in the Pac-12. You have to look at it that way and not like your USC.
Wulff was right, WSU is like the rest of them. When they complain about Leach leaving in four years, I'll point back to the day they fired a loyal guy.
(With that... I mean who isn't excited about the Cougs next year... they're going to win some games!)
Of course he got screwed, but it was WSU's only move.
ReplyDeleteHow would they have fired him next year after he won 7, 8 or 9 games. Because that's probably what this team will do, regardless if Wulff, Leach or Brandon Hansen is coaching.
So how shitty of a scenario would that be if Wulff was allowed to coach his last year, they won 8 games, went to a bowl, then Moos did what he wanted to do all along and pump new life in to the program by getting a new coach. There's no way Moos could sell that to the fans or to the administration. THey would be forced in to resigning him.
I'm not making excuses for WSU, but I totally see where they're coming from.
FOr me the worst part is they hired Wulff to do ONE THING. ONE THING only. To turn the program around. And that's EXACTLY what he did. Now Leach will reap the rewards.
And Wulff, well, he's in a pretty shitty spot. I mean it's not like he can go up anywhere, so I guess he has to go back down and start over. But he knew that was the risk of moving up in the first place. I'm sure a place like UC Davis, Cal Poly or somewhere like that will find him. I would just hate for EWU to have to face him in the Big Sky... scary.
Yeah Bart, I was thinking that too. I highly expect Wulff to be on the sidelines at Roos Field in the next couple of years... coaching for the other team.
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