On sports radio yesterday in Seattle they mentioned Chun was on Kansas'
- Thread starter CougEd
- Start date
Really hope Chun doesnt leave. WSU cant afford to lose Chun. And I dont trust WSU to find another AD as good as Chun, and do trust that WSU would replace Chun with another Jim Sterk like, at least semi bad AD
I think you can see Chun jumping to a bigger, more higher profile job.
I give him a ton of credit for what he's accomplished, specifically the coaching hires.
I don't think Schultz is going to hire a Sterk esq guy. I personally like Mike Marlow a lot, but not sure how his departure and the subsequent "Gesser scandal" sits with Schultz and the Regents.
I give him a ton of credit for what he's accomplished, specifically the coaching hires.
I don't think Schultz is going to hire a Sterk esq guy. I personally like Mike Marlow a lot, but not sure how his departure and the subsequent "Gesser scandal" sits with Schultz and the Regents.
This report really made no sense. Chun has a chance to go back to Ohio State in a few years. It makes zero sense to leave for Kansas, a state that is poorer than Washington, and doesn't spend as much on higher education. He has been successful at WSU so far. Why take a chance on the dumpster fire that Kansas has been, and possibly ruin his reputation before the job he likely really wants opens up? Yes, I am positive that Kansas would be after him. No, I do not think Chun is interested.
Read the same last night. I’m not concerned. But I guess I was’t concerned about Erickson either so what the hell do I know.
Legit job. Assuming Alvarez is out of the scene. Could be like Phil Fulmer at Tennessee and an absolute nightmare for an AD.
Man, I heard the same segment with Wilner and my take away was it’s much ado about nothing. Maybe it was a different segment? They said he’s buying time for Ohio State, a move that makes more sense.
Had a similar thought, we already saw Alvarez do this with football coaches too.
I don’t see him taking the Kansas job but not sure Leach took a better job either. Some people like Erickson left every job moving up the ladder before they remotely get stale. Sometime people leave because they are in top and their approval rating can only go one way.
And some would take the Kansas job because more money and only one way to go. Even if your football team for example only wins five games that is an improvement .
Personally if Chun leaves I hope it is for a great job like Ohio State
Chun is a bright guy, and has been a great AD, I hope we can keep him for a while longer. Not sure Kansas is a move up, I think he'll have better opportunities in the future. Never hurts to keep those interview skills sharp, I hope that's all the Kansas rumors are about at this point.
I agree as a school, MSU is basically a lateral move. However, MSU is in the SEC. That was the attraction for Leach, just like Tennessee was the previous year. The school didn't matter as much to him as the conference. He wanted the challenge of being successful in the best conference.
He's already shot down the Kansas rumors and said that he's not interested.
FWIW, KU is not a lateral move when it comes to the AD job. Their athletic department revenue before the pandemic was $122 million.....Wazzu was something like $72 million. They paid their prior AD $1.5 million, Chun makes $650k at WSU. I'm glad that he's not interested but I wouldn't have been surprised if he had been.
KU football sucks and has become a graveyard of coaching careers, but their athletic department is a different beast courtesy of KU basketball. KU averages a total home attendance of over 260,000 per year in basketball. For perspective, WSU had a total of 39,400 fans in 2018-19.
Still, KU football is a mess and it's hard to envision them not sucking for a while longer. They've struck out pretty dramatically with every hire in the past 12 years. Give a minority coach a shot? Fail. Try a coach who had success at a top level school? Fail. Try a long term assistant with lots of midwest ties that is highly regarded? Fail. Hire a coach who won a national championship? Fail. It's hard to wrap one's mind around the darkness that is KU football. They've gone 21-108 since they fired Mark Mangino in 2009. We had four years of horror under Wulff and they've been slightly worse than that for a dozen years now. Two winless seasons and another four where they failed to win even three games.
Any AD who enjoys and values football should be hesitant about the KU job. Everything else about their athletics is fine.
Just so I'm clear on this, for you, resigning their BB coach to a lifetime contract with a provisio that any NCAA violation suspensions will result only in a 50% salary reduction, is "fine". That being offerred in recognition of an ongoing NCAA probe into allegations of payments being made to players.
The de facto chain of command here in 2007 to 2011 led to a former bottom notch coach (0.407 winning percentage as head college football coach - worst of all former WSU football coaches) giving the OK for Gumbo bathroom breaks on recruit visits during the 9-40 era.
Might make him an appropriate candidate for Pac12 Commissioner. Only 2 years older than Nancy Pelosi and has worked in TV and radio. Might bring an excellent elegance to the Pac12 Network when the HQ moves to Ritzville.
I didn't say that their program wasn't dirty. Even with the accusations, they still print money like crazy every single basketball game. The thing about Self is that it does free up an AD to focus on everything else.
Very thankful that Chun didn't leave for Kansas. As others have pointed out, it is not a lateral move. Kansas basketball is a true blueblood program. Elite. They average over 17K fans/game and over 250K/season. Their anemic football program averaged just under 27K fans/game in 2017 and over 40K/game in the 2009 timeframe.
I obviously love WSU, but it never ceases to amaze me how many of our fans have no idea where we truly rank in the P5 athletics hierarchy.
I obviously love WSU, but it never ceases to amaze me how many of our fans have no idea where we truly rank in the P5 athletics hierarchy.
While being a blueblood basketball school is great. Football is by far the most important sport as far as athletics and name recognition. Football is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th,... Yes, Kansas is a lateral move for someone with greater expectations. In fact, it is probably worse. It is almost a no win situation. Basketball already has a name. If you do not improve football, your shine goes down. Sorry, Kansas is not a destination school except for the position of basketball coach. It certainly isn't a destination school for an AD.
Do you really know that football is the main reason that an AD wants to work for a program? I agree that football is the main driver for revenue, but you really don't understand the value of elite basketball. UNC, Kentucky, Duke, Indiana and Kansas all have huge AD budgets compared to Wazzu. I'd bet that the directors of those schools don't view themselves as losers hoping for a better gig.
I wouldn't classify KU as a "destination school" for an AD, but if they are ponying up $1.5 million per year, it's a hell of bigger destination than a lot of other schools out there. FWIW, they've never had trouble finding someone to take the job. For perspective, the KU job is probably a Top 30 job while Wazzu is a Top 60 job. Nobody is suggesting that KU is going to lure someone from a football blue blood, but perspective matters, and KU is a lot better than most jobs when it comes to salary and department financial stability.
I dont think WSU is as bad as some. I think it has some issues for sure. Imo the biggest issue for WSU isnt location. It’s people and decision making. WSU has had more opportunities to turn the corner than a lot of other schools and has fallen flat or just missed the mark.
In other news, water is wet.
There are schools with tons of money and still can't win for shit. So does money matter? Yes. Can it cover up poor decisions? Not always.
Some schools with money can and do blow it.
That's a different issue, though. Point here is that it's difficult to find schools without money, particularly those facing other structural limitations, who have built sustained winning programs in Power 5 (or Power 6 if we're talking about a basketball school).
in EDs world the only thing that matters is how much money a program has, it has been his constant recurring theme for years
"Coach Blutarsky with more money could have afforded Flounder as OL coach instead of Harold Etheridge and kept 9-40 House open for Years 5 and 6."
I've never considered WSU to be a bad job, nor do I consider Pullman to be a bad place to live. Unfortunately, I've come to realize that I'm in the minority opinion on those two points. Most coaches and their wives would prefer to be wealthy in more geographically friendly parts of the world. That's the bottom line.
It's a job with low expectations. This is great for coaches and AD's who just want to run their program without someone constantly looking over their shoulder giving "input". As long as you don't rock the boat too much, you'll last longer than you would almost anywhere else. We are the only school on America where a 9-40 record in four football seasons has a majority of the fanbase willing to give the guy a fifth year. We are the only school in America that honors a handshake agreement to hire a retiring coach's son following three losing seasons.
It's a fantastic opportunity but we need stability to move our programs to the next level. This requires us to retain good fits when we get them. This means keeping Chun as long as possible. Same for Shulenberger and Greeney. Ethridge too. Leach (swim coach) and Smith are moving up to that level. If Rolo demonstrates that he can be a winner here, we gotta keep him for a decade too.
The next step as I see it is supporting good coaches and giving them the resources to compete at the highest level. We've all heard Mrs Bennett wasn't a huge fan of Pullman. But I think working with the family to minimize his time away from home through more charters etc would have given Tony more ammo to stick around until the Wisconsin job opened up.
I agree with Almost everything you said here.
If, when coaches like Smith, Rolo, etc, are successful, you either have to have to keep them for 7 to 10 years, and not have them leave after 1,2,3,4, etc, years, AND or you have to be able to REPLACE a good coach with another GOOD coach.
RETAINMENT, AND GOOD REPLACEMENT of Presidents like Floyd, AD's like Chun, and coaches like Leach, etc, is CRITICAL to BUILDING a GOOD PROGRAM.
WSU hasnt done that, and has Blown chances like when Mike Price left, to Make a GOOD Replacement.
It remains to be seen if WSU blew the chance to make a GOOD Replacement of Leach.
And we will see if WSU will RETAIN Smith for a LONG time. And will see if WSU will make a GOOD replacement of Smith. And will see if WSU will RETAIN Chun, and if WSU make a Good Replacement of Chun.
Those things are CRITICAL to WSU building a GOOD PROGRAM.
Wow......a couple huge mischaracterizations here. Contrary to what you think, the vast majority of Coug fans wanted Wulff to be fired in 2011. There were a very small number of vocal supporters (cough......ED.......cough) but even the people that had been rooting for Wulff to succeed knew that his time was done. I've always said that he was closer to staying than the haters would like because we were literally a handful of plays from a bowl game in 2011, but everyone I personally know, including myself, was ready for a new coach when we failed to make a bowl. Wulff needed to be fired and I'd argue that 90% of Coug fans were fine with him being fired.
As far as taking a jab at the "handshake agreement"........that's arguably the stupidest comment that's ever been posted on this board. We went to the frickin' NCAA tournament in his first year because our AD recognized what he and his dad had built. Bennett won a frickin' national championship at Virginia after building them up from mediocrity. Your comment is the most sour grapes nonsense that I've ever seen. You deserve a Billy Madison "everyone is now dumber" award. I'm not a Tony Bennet fan, but holy crap, batman.....he's a great coach and it had nothing to do with WSU's status in the world. You and I both know that WSU would be an elite program by now if he had stayed.
I do agree that in general, your statement is true that WSU is a more forgiving place than most programs. At over half the schools in the country, Wulff's 3-22 record after two seasons would have had him on the hot seat and the 2-10 finish in 2010 would have seen him hit the road. Getting the fourth season is the proof that WSU is a forgiving place.....not fan's attitude after he was fired.
Tony Bennett was never going to stay at WSU vs. taking a Virginia-level job. People are just fooling themselves if they think some additional charters would have changed that. An ACC job in basketball is the pinnacle of professional success - and that's virtually every job in the ACC. It's akin to Leach leaving for Mississippi State. He could have stayed at WSU forever but wanted the next challenge in the best conference in the country. Oh well.
It's just crazy talk to think Mrs. Bennett liking or disliking Pullman had anything to do with Tony staying. There's not a soul among us who wouldn't take on the challenge for double the pay and luxuries WSU is still dreaming about more than a decade later.
Thank him for his service and move on. Same as when Raveling left and same as when Erickson left. Better jobs, bigger challenges and more money are a fact of life.
It's just crazy talk to think Mrs. Bennett liking or disliking Pullman had anything to do with Tony staying. There's not a soul among us who wouldn't take on the challenge for double the pay and luxuries WSU is still dreaming about more than a decade later.
Thank him for his service and move on. Same as when Raveling left and same as when Erickson left. Better jobs, bigger challenges and more money are a fact of life.
I think it was a majority, but it certainly wasn't vast. A very vocal group wanted another year. Wulff had a standing room only crowd at the Spokane Club a day or two before he was fired.
Without a doubt, there were people who supported Wulff and arguably, the closer that you were to the program, the more that a person might have felt that we were trending in the right direction and he deserved more time.
As much as the anti-Wulff crowd hates to believe it, he had the program very close to breaking through and into a bowl game. 2013 didn't happen because Leach was a miracle worker. That was a team with a lot of Wulff players that weren't "terrible". We regressed in 2014 because we lost some guys from that 2013 squad.
Now, before you think I'm saying that Wulff should have stayed, I'm not. Merely getting to 6-6 by 2012 or 2013 wasn't why we hired Paul Wulff in 2008. Even if you disregard that absolute crapfest that was 2008 and 2009, no fan looks at 6-6 by 2013 as a success....and that's if he could even have got us to that point. Wulff needed to be fired because it was obvious that his Power 5 ceiling was way too low. In contrast, by Leach's fourth season, we won 9 games including a bowl game. Even if someone wanted to argue that Wulff had set the table, nobody looks at our 2011 roster and predicts 9 wins in a few years.
Wrapping this back around to the start, I'm sure that people who met Wulff and talked to the coaches much (the kind who attend Spokane Club meetings) felt that we were heading in the right direction and we needed to be patient, but when you are talking about the overall fanbase......the vast majority were way over Wulff.
