Been thinking a lot about the state of our program and college football in general.
For as long as we've been Cougs, RECRUITING has always been a limitation for us. Mike Price was able to find creative ways to make recruiting work for him. Sinking money into the FOB and Martin upgrades, along with hiring Mike Leach helped narrow the gap as well. But, no matter what we do, it's always going to be an uphill battle. It will always be USC, Oregon, Washington & UCLA getting first dibs on the top 100 or so recruits out west (this ignores all the outside programs that recruit CA as well). At best, we are left to battle it out with the Cals, Arizonas, OSUs, Utahs & Colorados for the remainder of the talent.
That's fine and WSU has managed to get by on creative talent evaluation and "coaching up" up the kids we do get. Simply getting kids in the 100-150 range of talent in the West is close enough that we can knock off UW 1 out of every 3 years and USC about once a decade. It is what it is. But, during the Leach era, we saw a new tactic, applied mostly by Oregon of POACHING COACHES. Leach managed to assemble a great staff and one by one, we saw Simmons, Manning, Wilson, Grinch, Harrell, Mastro, Big Joe plucked off by our competitors. Oregon got tired of losing to us, so not only improved their staff, but decimated ours.
I'm excited for this new staff, but we're kind of kidding ourselves if Morris has huge success that he won't end up the next OC at Texas Tech, or Texas, or a head coach at G5 program. Excited for the new RB coach and hope he can bring in some Destiny/Luvu/Hercules types. But, if he does, we're crazy to think Oregon or USC doesn't come calling for him. This relatively new tactic seems to make it far more difficult to be a school that just consistently out develops our competitors.
Now, and this could be a big one, the TRANSFER PORTAL. We're in the early stages of this one, so I'm hesitant to call this the death knell for a program like WSU. But, I can certainly foresee a scenario where promising young talent is poached off our roster and lured away with big money NIL deals at SC, Oregon, UW. Maybe the JDL/Cameron Ward situation works out ok for us. We may be lucky we have Morris and he's got the Ward connection. In the future, it may not work out that way, and you really can't consistently trade Power 5 starters for FCS players.
Again, if the portal becomes more and more prevalent, then how can the WSUs, the OSUs, even the Utahs get by with just out developing the rest of the conference?
I don't know how this all plays out and I don't know what the solution is. All this seems to add up to really hinder a program like WSU. Hopefully I'm wrong.
For as long as we've been Cougs, RECRUITING has always been a limitation for us. Mike Price was able to find creative ways to make recruiting work for him. Sinking money into the FOB and Martin upgrades, along with hiring Mike Leach helped narrow the gap as well. But, no matter what we do, it's always going to be an uphill battle. It will always be USC, Oregon, Washington & UCLA getting first dibs on the top 100 or so recruits out west (this ignores all the outside programs that recruit CA as well). At best, we are left to battle it out with the Cals, Arizonas, OSUs, Utahs & Colorados for the remainder of the talent.
That's fine and WSU has managed to get by on creative talent evaluation and "coaching up" up the kids we do get. Simply getting kids in the 100-150 range of talent in the West is close enough that we can knock off UW 1 out of every 3 years and USC about once a decade. It is what it is. But, during the Leach era, we saw a new tactic, applied mostly by Oregon of POACHING COACHES. Leach managed to assemble a great staff and one by one, we saw Simmons, Manning, Wilson, Grinch, Harrell, Mastro, Big Joe plucked off by our competitors. Oregon got tired of losing to us, so not only improved their staff, but decimated ours.
I'm excited for this new staff, but we're kind of kidding ourselves if Morris has huge success that he won't end up the next OC at Texas Tech, or Texas, or a head coach at G5 program. Excited for the new RB coach and hope he can bring in some Destiny/Luvu/Hercules types. But, if he does, we're crazy to think Oregon or USC doesn't come calling for him. This relatively new tactic seems to make it far more difficult to be a school that just consistently out develops our competitors.
Now, and this could be a big one, the TRANSFER PORTAL. We're in the early stages of this one, so I'm hesitant to call this the death knell for a program like WSU. But, I can certainly foresee a scenario where promising young talent is poached off our roster and lured away with big money NIL deals at SC, Oregon, UW. Maybe the JDL/Cameron Ward situation works out ok for us. We may be lucky we have Morris and he's got the Ward connection. In the future, it may not work out that way, and you really can't consistently trade Power 5 starters for FCS players.
Again, if the portal becomes more and more prevalent, then how can the WSUs, the OSUs, even the Utahs get by with just out developing the rest of the conference?
I don't know how this all plays out and I don't know what the solution is. All this seems to add up to really hinder a program like WSU. Hopefully I'm wrong.