Why couldn't that offense win the big one? Gimmicky offenses just don't win championships.
Even if we accept that premise, we could say that the gimmicky offense took top-20 recruits (and, as I recall, more like top-25 recruits the first time) to title games where they finally lost against top-5 or top-10 recruits in the national championship game on two occasions. See this: http://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...-rankings-ratings-2015-college-football-teams.
While there, look at the recruiting ranking for WSU and how it compares to the Pac-12 average. Leach just won more games than anyone in the Pac-12 the past two years with recruits ranked well below average and ranked 11th in the conference. Recruiting's his responsibility, obviously, but I'll take a "gimmick" if that's what it takes to get those kind of results, especially immediately following the black hole that was the Wulff era.