It may just be me, but it seems that connection between the fans or alumni and the football program seems to be dwindling over the past few years. Maybe its just me, but it seems more difficult to understand what is truly going on in Pullman. Who is on the roster, who is injured,coaches thoughts on players? All seem like easy things to learn about your football program.Except in Pullman, seems like everything is held close to vest and only the bare minimum is available for the fans and alumni. Seems like a disconnect there. Thank goodness Mr Moos hired Jason Gesser. He atleast can verbalize to the fans his opinion on the goings on. Does not seem like the coaching staff is interested. Coach Kent is a breath of fresh air when it comes to coaching the players and working with the alumni and fans. Ok....just a rant. Feel free to tear it up. Go Cougs!
Fan/Alum Connection to the Football Program?
- Thread starter GoCougs96
- Start date
Re: Just WIN, baby
Al Davis and the Raiders had that right. "Just win, baby" was their motto.
Practically none of what you are mentioning would amount to a hill of beans if the Cougs were winning and going to bowls more years than not.
Just my opinion.
Al Davis and the Raiders had that right. "Just win, baby" was their motto.
Practically none of what you are mentioning would amount to a hill of beans if the Cougs were winning and going to bowls more years than not.
Just my opinion.
Curious. Because Moos is the AD, this is primarily his domain so most/all of this is regarding Moos, IMHO.
1. What is missing now, from your comparison of the past?
2. Are you trying to say prior to Moos, it was better or are you saying Moos is doing something different now than 4 or 5 years ago, his first year or two in his tenure?
3. Or heres the one that might come out of left field, are you saying this is mostly CML and hist tight lipped policies?
1. What is missing now, from your comparison of the past?
2. Are you trying to say prior to Moos, it was better or are you saying Moos is doing something different now than 4 or 5 years ago, his first year or two in his tenure?
3. Or heres the one that might come out of left field, are you saying this is mostly CML and hist tight lipped policies?
These "we deserve more info" posts always make me laugh.
How much inside info does your work give to current & former employees ?? How much inside info does your work give your customers ?? How much inside info does your work give the media ??
It's a business just like any other. It's not AAU or Club Sports.
How much inside info does your work give to current & former employees ?? How much inside info does your work give your customers ?? How much inside info does your work give the media ??
It's a business just like any other. It's not AAU or Club Sports.
Exactly, I can't imagine in the early-mid 90s Mike Price was letting everyone know all this inside information about the program with no Internet and little coverage around the PNW about the team.
Bottom line, fans feel much closer any WSU sports team while they are in school, and upon leaving realize it is hard to be close to a team that you do not see on a daily basis. Blaming Leach for a fan disconnect is insane, if fans want information about the team, they can go find it, whether it be here, the other 3 or 4 WSU fan sites, the WSU homepage, the Spokesman, the Seattle times, twitter, etc etc etc. All the inside info is out there.
I agree. Information is out there and available, if one is willing to look for it..... plus, it's not difficult to find.
All the info is there, you just need to look at the subtractions from the roster, then do a little leg work. If we win there will be interest. If we continue to lose, interest will continue to wain. My middle boy, graduating high school, has no interest in the Cougs. Do you blame him, when we haven't had a winning season since he was in the FIRST GRADE. 90% of the apathy has nothing to do with Leach. Even if he were "Mr. personality and Mr. forthcoming" you don't overcome 11 years of not winning with congeniality and a smile.
I've been attending games since the early 1980's, and I haven't seen much variance over the past 30+ years. When we win, we draw 33K fans. When we suck, we draw 25K fans. Our season ticket numbers have fluctuated to some degree, but not all that much.
dgibbons brings up a good point about how all games are on TV now, which no doubt keeps some fans home. On the other hand, the University has grown and we now have branch campuses thoughout the State, so we've probably picked up a few fans over the years.
All told, we have a core group of approximately 20K fans who attend home games. Since our program has never experienced consistent winning, it's hard to forecast how we would do if we strung together a decade of decent, 6+ seasons, but it would obviously help.
The real killer is that we've had some REALLY bad stretches of play over the past 2 decades. There's bad and then there's Cougar bad. I'm not talking about slight downturns, but rather stretches of several seasons where we're among the worst programs in the Nation. Price followed up the Rose Bowl in 1997 with 3 conference wins in 3 seasons, and consecutive losses to Idaho. Then Wulff drove the program into the abyss. The Leach hire breathed life into the program, and I still think he'll turn us around, but just when fans start to believe, we take a couple of steps back. In 2012, we lost a bunch (as was expected), but then pulled off a great Apple Cup win. 2013 was a rollercoaster season. We'd show promise, then be a no show. We earned a minor bowl birth, and proceeded to choke the bowl game away in epic Cougar fashion. 2014 began with us allowing an 80 yard TD pass on the first play from scrimmage, and we never recovered.
Our fans are justifiably jaded. We need to give them something to get excited about. It's been a long, dark road.
dgibbons brings up a good point about how all games are on TV now, which no doubt keeps some fans home. On the other hand, the University has grown and we now have branch campuses thoughout the State, so we've probably picked up a few fans over the years.
All told, we have a core group of approximately 20K fans who attend home games. Since our program has never experienced consistent winning, it's hard to forecast how we would do if we strung together a decade of decent, 6+ seasons, but it would obviously help.
The real killer is that we've had some REALLY bad stretches of play over the past 2 decades. There's bad and then there's Cougar bad. I'm not talking about slight downturns, but rather stretches of several seasons where we're among the worst programs in the Nation. Price followed up the Rose Bowl in 1997 with 3 conference wins in 3 seasons, and consecutive losses to Idaho. Then Wulff drove the program into the abyss. The Leach hire breathed life into the program, and I still think he'll turn us around, but just when fans start to believe, we take a couple of steps back. In 2012, we lost a bunch (as was expected), but then pulled off a great Apple Cup win. 2013 was a rollercoaster season. We'd show promise, then be a no show. We earned a minor bowl birth, and proceeded to choke the bowl game away in epic Cougar fashion. 2014 began with us allowing an 80 yard TD pass on the first play from scrimmage, and we never recovered.
Our fans are justifiably jaded. We need to give them something to get excited about. It's been a long, dark road.
This is just a slightly different form of a conversation that comes up every offseason, and the reasons behind it haven't changed:
We haven't won consistently in over a decade. Last time WSU was in a bowl game anyone cared about, today's students were barely in junior high.
There's still no gameday experience. Putting a couple of bounce houses on the practice field was a baby step in the right direction, but that's all. There's still nothing to occupy the moms and the adolescents...especially later in the season when the weather starts to turn.
It's still (and always will be) a full-day or full-weekend commitment for most fans, and costs quite a bit. It's tough to continue to justify spending money on tickets, gas, hotel/RV, food, etc., and driving 4, 10, 12 hours round trip...blowing the whole weekend and dropping $500-$1000...for a 3-hour game that we lose, and have nothing else to do around it. It doesn't take a genius to realize that your full-year package on Dish costs less than attending a single game, and then you can turn it off and do something else when it turns ugly.
There's still very little effective marketing. Tri-Cities has a big population and a branch campus, and WSU athletics has virtually no presence. They don't even do a very good job of marketing the events they've always had. The tailgate, night with CFB, golf classic, etc. You know how much marketing of those is done, even ON the WSU Tri-Cities campus? None. You know how much effort there is to draw WSU TC students to games? None.
The root of the problem is poor performance. On the field, on campus, in the community, and in the marketing department. As usual.
We haven't won consistently in over a decade. Last time WSU was in a bowl game anyone cared about, today's students were barely in junior high.
There's still no gameday experience. Putting a couple of bounce houses on the practice field was a baby step in the right direction, but that's all. There's still nothing to occupy the moms and the adolescents...especially later in the season when the weather starts to turn.
It's still (and always will be) a full-day or full-weekend commitment for most fans, and costs quite a bit. It's tough to continue to justify spending money on tickets, gas, hotel/RV, food, etc., and driving 4, 10, 12 hours round trip...blowing the whole weekend and dropping $500-$1000...for a 3-hour game that we lose, and have nothing else to do around it. It doesn't take a genius to realize that your full-year package on Dish costs less than attending a single game, and then you can turn it off and do something else when it turns ugly.
There's still very little effective marketing. Tri-Cities has a big population and a branch campus, and WSU athletics has virtually no presence. They don't even do a very good job of marketing the events they've always had. The tailgate, night with CFB, golf classic, etc. You know how much marketing of those is done, even ON the WSU Tri-Cities campus? None. You know how much effort there is to draw WSU TC students to games? None.
The root of the problem is poor performance. On the field, on campus, in the community, and in the marketing department. As usual.
Reading your post just reminds me of how confusingly bad the Cougs were last year. Not to cite Ed's "iron laws of Cougar football", but he's right in that typically when we have a Sr at QB and some experience on the DL, we're pretty good.
Now, I didn't think we were going to win 10 games, but coming off a 6 win season, with Halliday coming back, a couple seniors including an NFL talent on the line and a pretty experienced OL, I just still scratch my head at 3 wins.
It's pretty inexplicable that a green secondary and poor special teams could lose you 9 games.
Fab, I think it is very explainable. I just don't like the explanation.
And it is clear that the offense didn't lose all those games. Sure, they could have been a bigger factor in winning them, but they did not lose them all.
Overall, IMHO, this was the worst special teams effort in the history of Cougar football. It was not the worst D. But it was the worst special teams.
And the D was probably in the bottom 20%.
So I don't think 3 wins is inexplicable. But I certainly don't like the explanation.
And it is clear that the offense didn't lose all those games. Sure, they could have been a bigger factor in winning them, but they did not lose them all.
Overall, IMHO, this was the worst special teams effort in the history of Cougar football. It was not the worst D. But it was the worst special teams.
And the D was probably in the bottom 20%.
So I don't think 3 wins is inexplicable. But I certainly don't like the explanation.
When you think about this, we seldom have to wait to go to a bowl with a senior at QB. Most of the time it has been a junior at QB. Going back to Rosenbach (Jr), Bledsoe (Jr), Davis (So), Leaf (Jr), Gesser (Jr), Gesser (Sr), Kegel (Sr), and Halliday (Jr). Only the back to back years of Gesser and Kegel did WSU go to a bowl with a senior in the last 25 years plus.
Except for maybe the Cubs, every team that is in the middle of a down period doesn't draw fans and has little interest. During the Chuck Knox years and the Nordstroms owned the Seahawks, you couldn't find a ticket. Ken Behring buys the team, the losses mount up and the Kingdome had 10's of thousands of empty seats.
The Mariners when they first moved into Safeco Field and were winning 90 plus games every year were drawing 4 million fans a year to the ballpark. They start a long period of losing and their attendance dropped over 50%.
If, and I believe fore likely when, the programs begins to win again, we will see the attendance improve, the donations improve, and more positive energy from WSU all around.
Just doesn't seem like a special teams unit should be that bad. I mean, shouldn't your coverage units be relatively easy to fill? And it's not like the execution should be that challenging either.
Seems like a really stupid reason to lose football games.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that branch campus kids have little to zero school pride. Half the kids at the WSUV campus wear Oregon gear. 95% of them have never been to Pullman, nor could they imagine a reason for going.
Admittedly, I haven't done a ton of research here, but it seems that if your circumstances and/or choices dictate you staying where you are and attending a branch campus, you're exceedingly unlikely to disregard those and suddenly decide to make it over to Pullman on a regular basis, especially in today's world with all the games on TV in high definition in a nice 70-degree house.
I'm sure you could dig up a handful of anecdotal exceptions, but you pretty much have to write off the branch campus folks. The reason 99.9% of Coug fans are such is that they want to WSU in Pullman and got a dose of what it means to be a Coug on campus. This also applies to t-shirt fans or the lack thereof.
Winning will help to some extent with both of these groups, BTW. I don't think it even has any branch campuses, per se, but if the U. of Oregon had a branch campus in Medford, you'd bet a good chunk of the UO-Medford Ducks would try to go to some games in Autzen after graduating.
If there were any effort made to reach out to the branch campus kids and encourage them to attend, and if they didn't, then there'd be no room for complaint. But there's been no effort.
The way I see it, the branch campuses provide a foothold in their communities. Market those students, and use them as the seed to grow interest in Spokane and Tri-Cities. These are the biggest population bases in eastern Washington, both within easy driving distance, and should be areas of emphasis for marketing anyway, so I'm not sure what they're thinking.
WSU's presence/visibility in Tri-Cities (the town, not just the campus) is very low. Moos put an associate AD here a couple years ago, ostensibly to do local work and raise the profile, but that hasn't happened. I'm not sure what the issue is.
The way I see it, the branch campuses provide a foothold in their communities. Market those students, and use them as the seed to grow interest in Spokane and Tri-Cities. These are the biggest population bases in eastern Washington, both within easy driving distance, and should be areas of emphasis for marketing anyway, so I'm not sure what they're thinking.
WSU's presence/visibility in Tri-Cities (the town, not just the campus) is very low. Moos put an associate AD here a couple years ago, ostensibly to do local work and raise the profile, but that hasn't happened. I'm not sure what the issue is.
All makes sense. I didn't mean you have to write off the branch campus folks in terms of making at least some effort, especially in Spokane and the Tri-Cities, where it's more than reasonable to expect fans to make the trip. I'd be a bit surprised, though, if you get back more money for your dollar spent marketing to WSU branch campus alums in Vancouver than you do on your dollar spent marketing to folks who have no connection to WSU but are located within 60-90 minutes of campus.
My off season excitement is much lower at this point this year than it was the past 2 years. I think the Apple Cup broke a bit of my spirit. As a CAF member and a loyal fan it was very difficult to stomach that game. I live in Portland so between the game tickets, gas, hotel and food it came to around $500 to go to the game. Now, showing up and sitting through brutal 12 degree weather to see the team come out and perform the way they did just crushed me. It was one of the worst games I've ever sat through and to be quite honest, I'm not in a hurry to come back right now. Will that change as the season gets closer? Probably.... hopefully.
