Ernie was a great salesman, but a horrible coach. He had enough success under his belt to fool A LOT of people.
The negative people on Moos are really in more of a "just shut up" category. I mean seriously... Moos took us out of shit land from Wulff to Leach and got us on ESPN Game Day. The Leach hire saved all of WSU.
I'm pretty sure we had more weeks "ranked" under Leach than any other coach in our history.
Again... a REAL Cougar Thank You Moos!
You apparently became a Coug fan after this fella that used to coach at WSU named Mike Price.
Seasons that we finished ranked under Leach: 1 - 2018 (#10)
Seasons that we finished ranked under Price: 6 - 1992 (#15), 1994 (#21), 1997 (#9), 2001 (#10), 2002 (#10), 2003 (#9).
No offense to Leach, but in terms of great WSU teams, he was not worthy of holding Mike Price's jockstrap. Leach was more consistent than Price, but he is not in the discussion when it came to having Top 25 teams.
Just for kicks, I looked up our number of weeks ranked in the Top 25 for Leach.
2015 (2) peaked at #20
2016 (4) peaked at #20
2017 (15) peaked at #8...ranked #24 in preseason poll
2018 (9) peaked at #8....only season that we finished ranked under Leach.
2019 (4) peaked at #19....ranked #23 in preseason poll
ESPN only goes back to 2002, but we were ranked in every week of 2002, started at #7 and peaked at #3. We were an Apple Cup injury to Jason Gesser and an Ohio State 4th down conversion from playing in the national championship.
Under Price:
1989 (7) peaked at #15 before the Stallworth injury took us from 6-1 to 6-5.
1992 (6) peaked at #15
1993 (1) peaked at #25 right before we lost four straight to end the season when Pattinson got hurt.
1994 (12) peaked at #16
1997 (12) peaked at #9
2001 (10) peaked at #8
2002 (16) peaked at #3 (an Apple Cup injury to Jason Gesser and an Ohio State 4th down conversion from playing in the national championship)
2003 (12) peaked at #6
So...Price was ranked more in his last three seasons than Leach was eight seasons. The Cougs were ranked in 76 weeks of Price's tenure. Leach teams were ranked in 34 weeks of his tenure. Even factoring in the longer time that Price was at WSU, he did a better job than Leach.