WAZZU fans are kidding themselves

(Buy a WSU hat here.)

Deadspin just released their story on the alleged abuse that Mike Leach and his coaching staff unleashed on his players. Looking through it, I can't say that anything is illegal or can be considered abuse, but if I were a parent or player - I definitely wouldn't go to WSU. Why? Leach treats his players like crap. Simply put.

Example one...

Sources and documents obtained by Deadspin recount clashes between training staff and coaches over player safety, and physical—and nearly physical—altercations between coaches and players. They describe "dangerously excessive" workouts used as punishments, including an episode in which coaches supposedly sprayed players in the face with water from a hose while making them exercise in a sandpit in cold weather.

Sure that isn't abuse but it's the kind of workout you probably don't even see in a boot camp. I can get past tough workouts in the sandpit, however, it's the treatment of injury that really disturbs me.

The father of a player in good standing with the football program told Deadspin that the conflict between the old training staff and the new coaches had to do with how aggressive the coaches were about influencing players to return from injuries before they were ready.

"I think this staff is definitely more aggressive in that sense," he said. Players who got hurt, he said, were placed at the bottom of the depth chart when they returned, where they risked missing up to half a season trying work their way back up. "There was this sense of being punished for being hurt, for sure," he said, "so naturally a kid doesn't want to lose his starting spot to hide his injury because he doesn't want to lose his spot."

The source said he knew Drake had a great reputation as trainer "only through my own kid's experience due to my kid getting hurt a fair amount of times. Talking with Bill, he was always an outstanding guy and I always felt like he had the best interest of the athlete in mind."

Another parent said coaches had been trying to cut injured players from the team in the spring, even if the injuries were not severe. The efforts to convince players "their careers were over" were a source of contention with the old training staff, the source said.

Again, not abuse, but it shows no real consideration for the student-athlete. Throw in that WSU's head football trainer sent a letter of complaint to Bill Moos, the athletic director, and that WSU completely threw Marquess Wilson under the bus... I just don't see why athletes would want to come to this school. I understand that tough practices are something that happen all across the nation on football teams - but this has almost a "We don't care about our players" attitude that won't exactly attract five-star recruits.

Looking at the comment section and Facebook, lots of WSU fans were saying "well case closed, nothing found by anyone, clean program" but what they're ignoring is that everybody has now seen how Leach treats his players. It's all over the internet. When he goes out to recruit players, they're going to bring this up.

"So you want me to come to the smallest football program in the Pac-12, one that hasn't had a winning season in god knows when and you're going to treat me like that?"

Yeah good luck Cougs.

I'm not saying any of this is illegal or anything like that, but what I am saying is that Leach now has a bigger image problem and so does WSU. It may be just a philosophy change, but you're really ignoring the fact that parents will be concerned where they're sending their kids and they'll pile over all this info. Sure if WSU is a kid's only choice he'll go, but good recruits are usually courted by several different schools.

If Leach doesn't get the on-field product turned around - good lord, WSU is in serious trouble.

Sorry, but Wulff got screwed

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!)

Washington State, why isn't this you?

I'm currently watching the LSU-Mississippi State game on ESPN and one of the camera angles showed the jumbotron on the field and it's nearly the width of the football field. Move over Jerry Jones, apparently this is how SEC football rolls.

Now if there is ever a little brother in the SEC, it is Mississippi State. While they've certainly had a good team in recent years, they're not on the level of say a Florida, LSU or Alabama. However that doesn't seem to dampen the fans enthusiasm during the game. 

And you know what? Mississippi State University is in a smaller town that Pullman, and doesn't have a Spokane-sized city to draw money and fans from (Come on it's Mississippi... you'd be lucky if there's outdoor plumbing outside the stadium). However Davis Wade Stadium is a 55,000-seat shrine to college football.

What the heck Washington State? Martin Stadium is certainly a fun place to go watch a football game but it's light years behind Davis Wade - who's jumbotron is the second largest in all of college football - and every team in the Pac-12. I mean does this look nearly as cool as David Wade?

(Granted it's empty but that's how things are looking during Cougar games lately)

I'm just aghast at the inability for the Cougs to improve seating arrangements. I don't want to be a downer here, but if you can't even fill a 35,000-seat stadium... will the Pac-12 even want you when they continue to expand.

There needs to be some serious game on-ing... and it's not the University's fault, WSU alumni are notoriously cheap (as are EWU alums, yours included). What needs to happen in the next 10 years is a major stadium renovation and improvement in seating, not the aesthetic stuff that they've been doing to the place in recent years. 

Otherwise major college football might just pass WSU by. 

Check these uniforms out...

Here are the retro uniforms that Michigan and Notre Dame will wear when they play one another on Sept. 10 (Because unlike the NFL, there will be a college football season this year). What do you think?

TV guys are going to be pissed about trying to identify all the players and will probably refer to everyone on Michigan as "M." Other than the letter and the shoulder striping, it's not a huge change from Michigan's normal jerseys. Notre Dame on the other hand has a really different look and I think that they should use this as an alternate uniforms when they bust out the green jerseys on occasion.

That ND helmet looks awesome! And Michigan, well... they just stuck with the same helmet. Whoop de doo.

The Coug Cow

Yesterday we were traveling home down I-90 and passed a camper. But not just any camper. This one was the Cow. Or, "Cougs on Wheels."

Very strange.

Video Bites: Carroll to Seahawks

The January 6th edition of the JustSON Video Bites. That's right, bite sized videos!

New kayaks, Pete Carroll to the Seattle Seahawks, WSU sucks and much more!

View my new kayaks over at Just Northwest.

More bad news for the Cougars

I was running across some comments made by WSU fans on the Spokesman message boards after yesterday's familair drubbing at the hands of UCLA and they don't paint a very good picture about Paul Wulff and the Cougars.

There is so much wrong with this picture that I heartily agree with Jim Walden, you can't give out a Cougar player of the game award when there is none.

And to think that the future of Cougar Football flies only IF the Phase III Martin Stadium Project gets funded/completed? Most of my friends are no longer attending games due to lack of product, let alone digging deep for monies to donate.

Changes in the Coaching Staff, clear goals for discernable improvement/victories must be established and measurable progress made next year by Jim Sterk. This is no longer tenable and either gets corrected or we are doomed to being the doormats of the PAC-10 (again).

Go Cougs!

Here's the thing about WSU - they have the smallest stadium in the Pac-10, they have quite possibly the worst destination in the Pac-10 (who wants to go to Pullman?), smallest athletic budget, smallest collection of donors, when it comes down to it, things aren't really fair at all. College football has become such a big money prospect that they're an obvious caste system and frankly, the Cougs are on the bottom of this.

While I don't excuse Wulff on all counts (there's really no signs of tactical awareness from the staff), he wasn't exactly dealt a full hand after Doba ran the program into the ground. WSU can't change coaches now either because they'd just have to go out and get another no-namer like Wulff who might be even worse. Then they're paying two coaches' contracts and they have to reset the program again. It's really a no-win situation.

WSU needs to evaluate its place in the Pac-10 and what it wants to establish as goals. Because right now, it's just running on fumes.

What a Tuel

At WSU, they like to gently work young talent along and develop them until they're absolutely ready.

That's why true freshman Jeff Tuel got thrown to the wolves against USC last week and will hopping from the frying pan into the fire against Oregon at Autzen Stadium this weekend.

No pressure, kid.

Actually from what we saw from Tuel against USC, this might be the spark that the Cougars are looking for. Not this season. Seriously? You think there's any hope whatsoever for this season? What Cougar-shine have you been drinking? We're talking about the future. Hope you brought your time machine.

Paul Wulff developed Erik Meyer and Matt Nichols at Eastern Washington, both throwing them out on the field early in their collegiate career. They may not win this year, but Wulff knows how to turn these young guys into eventual winners.

Say hello to the the start of the Jeff Tuel era.

Epic Photo: He's Back!

WSU head coach Paul Wulff is back on the sidelines for practice after not being allowed near the team for three days due to NCAA violations back when he coached at EWU. Surely a blow that will bring down Cougar football as we know it.

In other news, EWU is still hamstrung with it's no-postseason sanction by the NCAA. Even though Wulff is no longer there and the only actual people that get hurt by this are the student-athletes.

Hooray NCAA! Way to continue to be the worst sports organization since the XFL went out of business!

At least WSU isn't the only school with former quarterback problems

Move over Ryan Leaf, there's another former college quarterback great making his school proud.

Timmy Chang, former star quarterback at the University of Hawaii and recently released professional journeyman, was arrested Thursday in Mililani, Hawaii, and is being investigated for robbery for his role in a brawl that took place back on June 1st. A 23-year-old woman told police she was filming the melee when Chang, 27, approached her and told her to stop. A struggle ensued, he grabbed her camera and then "threw it on the roof of a nearby building".

Did Chang learn anything from the pros? Most football players worth their salt would have kidnapped the woman and taken her to IHOP where they would have paid her off with the money the earned from holding the place up with the pistol they owned (legally). That is if they didn't shoot themselves in the leg in the process.

I don't really fault Chang, it's a minor incident since fights do occasionally break out at parties from time to time (Wonders of wonders!). I do wonder what the woman was thinking, if she valued her property, the best thing to do would not be filming a brawl.

People tend to get testy about that sort of thing.

WSU Cougars unveil new uniforms

So the WSU Cougars unveiled their new uniforms for the 2009 season and I have to say that the changes are a little underwhelming. They're still awesome uniforms mind you, but not much changes. They just switched from the "Cougar" script to the famous WSU logo on the helmet, added white pants to the away uniforms and played around with shoulder striping.

Let's play a game shall we? Home Jerseys before:

And the Home Jerseys after:

Away Jerseys before:

Away Jerseys after:

New Alternate Away Jerseys:

Again, I think the general scheme is awesome, this just isn't much of a change from the jerseys they had before. At least they didn't go back to the early stripping mess of the early 00s that made me seasick.

Where are all the college baseball fans?

Football and basketball rule the pocketbooks of universities, and rightly so, they attract thousands upon thousands of fans.

But what about college baseball?

It's been relegated to a status lower than minor league baseball even though it has produced some of the game's brightest stars.

I would assume that college baseball hasn't quiet earned the respect that football and basketball have because:

1. Minor and major league baseball tickets are much more affordable than their football and basketball counterparts, and games are much more frequent, so why go to a college game when you can usually find the pros playing in a town near you (Seriously, they have a minor-league team in Missoula, that means there HAS to be a town near you.)

2. Think it's bad now in college basketball with kids going one and done? The much less-important MLB draft has a pretty strong mixture of high school and college prospects. And here's the catch - probably the most talented kids go directly to the minor leagues but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be a success in the pros - but the risk could prove to be a huge payoff. So college baseball loses some of its best young prospects to the draft and then the college kids who get drafted, usually end up in the minor leagues and once they actually make the big leagues you've forgotten they've even played in college.

3. It's baseball, there's no big singular game like football that causes Lou Holtz to spit out his dentures. It's a season-long process and no one pays attention until Super Regionals and the College World Series.

So for the most part, college baseball takes a back seat and that's why some major schools don't even have baseball programs. Which is a shame - I remember feeling cheated when EWU didn't have a NCAA baseball program after being a Pac-10 member in the 1980s.

Perhaps its this feeling that has caused Casey and I to go baseball crazy. Casey is interested in the University of Oregon's baseball team, and I'll definitely keep you updated with the Cougs, Zags and Whitworth.

And don't forget the Spokane Indians and Riverhawks too. We'll cover them with weekly updates as well.

UConn is pretty good

So No. 2 UConn put the hurt on No. 8 Gonzaga today 88-83 in overtime, Eastern Washington lost by 30 points to Washington and WSU plays Idaho tomorrow.

Can't hardly wait.

The Zags had a full crowd at Key Arena behind them but it wasn't enough as the Huskies turned up the defense in the waning seconds of regulation and overtime. Pargo couldn't seem to be able to hold onto the ball either. All Gonzaga's three point shooters fouled out when they really needed them.

All in all, it wasn't the greatest outings for the Zags and they only lost by five points to second-best team in the country. You can't be too discouraged, this is a talented team, they're just going to need to play better under pressure.

With the game on the line, they fell apart. Does that sound familiar? Anyone remember Adam Morrison crying at center court, because I do. However, I think this team is considerably better than that Sweet Sixteen Squad.

Once they get rolling in the WCC schedule, they'll get into the perfect attitude for the NCAA Tournament.

... and I really don't want to talk about the Eagles right now.

Well that sucked...

I was pretty excited for this Gonzaga-WSU Basketball game last night. With the last three games going the Cougars way, it was going to be interesting to see how the Bulldogs reacted playing down in Pullman against a young but talented team.

And they blew WSU out.

The "scary" thing about this is that the Zags made the Cougars look very pedestrian - and they're not. They scored 74 points against a defense that likes to get their opponents in the low 40s. They played in a hectic road environment that is about as close as a NCAA Tournament game as you'll get. They took control of the game and never looked back.

And I never looked back, heck I stopped watching the game when the Zags went up by 30. No way the ball-control offense of WSU was going to make it a game after that point.

In fact, I'm pretty sure everyone stopped watching at that point. This was suppose to be a win-win situation if both teams play a close, exciting contest. Instead it was kind of like watching the Super Bowl when it's a blowout.

"Where's the chips? Let's go in the other room and play Madden"

This Zag team made short work of the Cougars (who now have a lot of question marks) and have a chance to do some big, big, big things this year.

And I don't just mean winning the WCC Championship.

Remember how bad football season was?

Well the hoops season has started oh so much better. Washington State is receiving votes in the Top 25 poll instead of providing less competition to USC than their practice squad, the Gonzaga Bulldogs are ranked No. 5 in the nation and the Eastern Washington Eagles are playing some pretty good ball and kickoff their Big Sky Conference schedule this Saturday against Montana State at Reese Court.

While everyone expected the Cougs and Zags to be doing pretty good at this point, the Eagles are a bit of a surprise at 5-2. Namely because of this guy...

No not Bobby Knight, he's moonlighting as an ESPN analyst at the moment, the guy on the right is Benny Valentine, perhaps the best athlete EWU has seen walk through its doors since Rodney Stuckey. Don't believe me, here's the stat line for every game so far for Valentine.

vs. Illinois - 14 points
vs. UC Irvine - 17 points
vs. Texas Arlington - 28 points
vs. Minnesota - 29 points
vs. UC Irvine - 21 points

That's every game he's led the Eagles in scoring this season. If this were a player for Gonzaga, we'd probably be hearing about how he should be named Player of the Year.

And speaking of the Zags, they showed what they made of at the Old Spice Classic and they seem to be doing just fine without this guy...

I'm glad that Spokane will be remembered for producing the athlete that looks like the hero who wears a mask in V for Vendetta. Way to improve this city's image!

But hey, if Pargo does his thang, I think we'll be forgetting about Morrison a whole lot quicker since he seems to not be making very many waves in the NBA.

And as far as WSU goes, we'll I'm fully convinced they'll win 20 games this season and only cross the fifty-point barrier in conference play about three times. Who's ready for a 35-20 NCAA Tournament first round win?

Halloween Costume Ideas!

Halloween is already upon us and I’m sure you’re already sick of seeing the “Zombie, because I think death is cool” and “Kitty Kat, because all I have to do is wear cat ears on my head” variety of costumes.

Luckily, sports provides a myriad of possible costume ideas, and since this column is just a week too late, you have an entire year to make it.

Ed Hochuli
Simply get a referee jersey, pad your shirt to give a bulky, strong-man appearance (apology to “that guy” who thinks he has guns for arms but they’re actually twigs) and then walk around with a whistle, inadvertently blowing it all the time.

Tri-City Americans fan
This requires a mullet wig, Ams jersey, mobile home, cut-off jeans, cowbells (a sure sign of an annoying fan) and no Memorial Cup Championship ring.

WSU or Washington Football fan
Very easy, just find a paper bag and put it over your head.

Clay Bennett
This might require you to go down to your local Halloween store and find a snake costume.

Shaun Alexander
You can just dust off that old “37” Seahawks jersey and fall down everytime it looks like somebody is going to get close to you.

Mariners General Manager
Just walk around in a suit throwing money at people that don’t look very talented when it comes to the game of baseball.

Michael Phelps
This might be a little tough; somehow get your hands on eight Olympic Medals from Beijing, wear them around your neck and make sure that you have ample time to squeeze your large buttocks into one of the swimming suits that are tighter than the Oakland Athletics front office.

Fred McGriff
Wear a baseball cap with an obscenely high crown, and keep endorsing Tom Emanski’s Defensive Drills Video.

Thanks Leaf. For making WSU look bad

As the draft quickly approaches, I kinda feel sorry for Ryan Leaf. He is made an example of how a first round draft can flop. Not just flop, but crash and burn like a flying pile of manure. And then I don't feel so bad for him when I remember he constantly makes Washington State University famous. As a flop. Hehe.

For those that don't know my loyalties lie across the mountains with the Washington Huskies. And thanks to Leaf, the Cougars are remembered.

But as spring football comes to an end across the nation, I can only hope that both of these schools fare batter than last year. Cause for far too long UW and WSU have lived in the cellar of the PAC-10. And even making teams like Stanford look good. Stanford, yeah, the smart doctors who aren't very good at contact sports. And here is why.

Well, hopefully come December, UW and WSU fans won't end the season with, "Well, there is always next year."