Well...who knows. The coaches commented on it. Recruiting "experts" commented on it. Could be totally inaccurate. The number of signees were down that year for that position. Maybe everyone had an overabundance of lineman, I don't know.
Eklund
- Thread starter longtimecoug
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Of Course Wulff wouldn't do the necessary gameplanning for the coffee- Harbaugh's an "black, drip coffee" if there ever was one.
Wulff and Sturdy would be standing in the lunchroom, waves of indecision washing over their empty heads as their eyes bounced among the creamer options (and somewhere Halliday is still waiting for a play... ).
He only poached that first year. Not sure why ethics got in the way afterward.
If there's a lack of linemen on the west coast, then look somewhere other than the west coast. That staff had connections in Florida, did it not? Were there no linemen in Florida either? Did that staff have no connections in Texas or on the Islands? If they didn't, they should have.
"Well, there's no linemen worth taking in Washington & California, so we just won't take any" is an excuse, yea, it's just a crappy excuse, and an excuse that should get you fired.
Their whole sales pitch was crap. How do you win jack squat for games and go into a living room telling kids they're gonna redshirt? Clearly there is soooo much talent on the field that kids can't play early at a school that won 2 games.... He should have been up and down the West Coast telling kids they expect them to show up ready to play from the first day of practice.
He was a joke. His staff was a joke. Kids took a flyer on his WSU team, they saw right thru his BS act. Have you ever seen a revolving door of kids thru a program like Coach T had? Have you ever seen so many kids walk away from a FREE college education? Amazing.
He was a joke. His staff was a joke. Kids took a flyer on his WSU team, they saw right thru his BS act. Have you ever seen a revolving door of kids thru a program like Coach T had? Have you ever seen so many kids walk away from a FREE college education? Amazing.
You're right, I had forgotten that. That's some big time stuff right there. Rolling with the big boys. I bet Jerry Glainville was pissed.
Seriously, can you imagine calling your father and mother and telling them you're walking away from a free education? WTH happened inside that program that kids were willing to trade a FREE friggin' education for essentially what's behind door #2?
The telling one for me was the lineman (Prescott?) who left to pursue a professional boxing career. I mean, yea, maybe he was just THAT passionate about boxing, but it struck me more that WSU football was probably just not a very fun place to be.
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It was Olympic boxing gold... Cause you can train for a few months, maybe a few years and get up to speed for a run at the Olympics...
I'd love to see a book written by the players. Or even finding out where all the kids that left WSU during his tenure went, why they left and what they're doing now.
That guy signed 21 high school players his last class and only 15 made it to campus. That folks, is essentially a SC sanctioned size recruiting class, only WSU got none of the championships, bowls, money, exposure, etc....
Simply amazing how bad he was. He ruined more kids careers then he helped. He should be selling insurance.
I was watching Leach press conference this week and he was asked about the youth of the program. He said that everybody has a chance to play early, if they prove themselves, they'll play. He seemed surprised by how my young kids he has on his two deep right now, could be for show or could be he just never noticed. Said when he first got here that they couldn't form a team if they didn't play freshman.
http://www.wsucougars.com/mediaPortal/player.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=30400
Lets face it. WSU funded a D-1aa coaching staff with ties to each other, high school coaches in Washington State and a whole lotta 'little engine that could' and #whatdoIgottolose.
They weren't hired to go to bowl games. They were hired to cut expenses to the bone until "we can figure out what direction were heading."
They weren't hired to go to bowl games. They were hired to cut expenses to the bone until "we can figure out what direction were heading."
That would be an interesting read. I wrote a few stories on CZ on how Wulff treated players the first few years. He was a joke.
Wulffs 1AA staff was pathetic. I can just imagine them trying to get kids out of SoCal to play for them. They must have been laughed out of town !!
I would wager beer/booze/money that when the team found out who was hired there were kids that had zero idea who he was. A power 5 job hiring a coach and kids on the team have never heard of him before. In the age of social media, ESPN websites, coaching websites, media speculation on job hirings.... Here's your coach fellas! Coach T from EWU! Who the F is that? If you were an upperclassman on that team, how do you leave that team meeting not feeling sold out and let down by the university? They fired a guy every player that came thru WSU for 20 years loved in Bill Doba... And replaced him with a no name, nobody from a 1AA school. Kids aren't dumb. They can smell a turd a mile away and know when they've been sold coal for gold.
It is why Jeshua Anderson quit football for good. He would have continued to do both, but football under Wulff ceased to be fun. His closest friends are still those from football. I believe his roommate at WSU was Brandon Gibson.
RGIII did both, of course, it was probably pretty fun winning Heismans & bowl games, as opposed to losing football games by 9 touchdowns.
You really have to feel sorry for Wulff. There were plenty of lineman to recruit before 2008. There were plenty of lineman to recruit from 2012 on forward. It was unfortunate for Wulff that the only time ever in the history of recruiting that there were so few offensive lineman coincided with the four years between 2008 to 2011 when he was head coach at WSU. Damn, the timing was so bad for him.
We know this was true, as no other west coast team had an offensive line either.
The conference really should have limited teams to only starting 3 linemen during this period. That would have only been fair.
Name a single coaching transition where the old coach was fired for failure, the new coach comes in, and ANY player thought football suddenly became 'fun'.
With a simple Google search, immediately, an Arkansas article to that effect popped up.
Fun is the wrong word. More accurate to say that the team had zero chance to compete.
Now, that would be an interesting read. This board has had threads galore discussing this issue. Would it not be fascinating to hear the opinions from those on the inside? The downside is that publication of same would generate further attention towards an era and threads that we would all rather forget.
As someone else mentioned, "fun" might not be the best term to use. Leach drastically increased the required effort while increasing the possibility of success. If a kid viewed the effort as not worth the value of success, then it was not a positive change. If willing to work for success then the coaching change was a positive transformation. Even "fun" in an indirect way.
It also cut deeply into the juice box and orange slice catering business nookie ran during 6 and 40.
Winning is fun. Losing is not. I give you Portland State.
Completely untrue. When E.D. started this up a couple years ago, I looked up how many OL were within each West Coast State between certain years. I also looked up numbers nationally. There was ONE year, that there was a noticeable drop in recruits… But just one year. And I recall, nationally, there wasn't a year that every D1 school couldn't have brought in 3, 2star OL (or better) in any given year. Could they qualify, did they become injured… who knows but just in rough numbers, there is no reason a program couldn't/can't bring in 3 OL a year, just based on availability. So this mantra that there was a drop in OL recruits during a certain coaches tenure, is wrong.
It is completely irrelevant if there is a drop in recruits. Do you know why? Because you still have to line up with 5 offensive linemen. No way around it. So if the kids you get aren't what you'd usually get, so what? You still had to have bodies. You never know, maybe one or two of them surprise you. But you can't choose to take zero. Choosing to take zero offensive linemen is choosing to win zero games.
Agree. If there really were a drop, there would be a drop for all schools. It appears the drop only affected WSU.
