USA Today
- Thread starter westtoeast
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This article summarizes perfectly what I've eluded to over the past year. Moos did what he had to do, and it wasn't as though he was secretive about his spending plan. Then, Schulz came in and looked things over after the spending spree and said, whoa, we need to get the train back on track. Moos felt hung out to dry and bolted to Nebraska.
Kudos to Chun for backing Moos in this article. I'm in the minority on this board, but I'm optimistic about Schulz and Chun moving forward. If Leach sticks around, and his job search antics and tweeting haven't likely strengthened his dating profile, I think WSU will right the ship and balance the budget over the next 5 years.
Kudos to Chun for backing Moos in this article. I'm in the minority on this board, but I'm optimistic about Schulz and Chun moving forward. If Leach sticks around, and his job search antics and tweeting haven't likely strengthened his dating profile, I think WSU will right the ship and balance the budget over the next 5 years.
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Balance the budget? Maybe. Pay back the debt? No way, unless T. Boone Pickens decides he likes us more than his alma mater. Or our billionare, sports-loving alum decides to act like Boone.
I really hope things turn around in basketball, mens and womens. Success there would generate revenue without as much overhead attached to it as football. I see that as our best bet to start clawing out of the hole, but I doubt Kent will be the guy to make that happen
The problem was, there was no checks and balances at the time. Moos had big ideas. His revenue projections were pie in the sky. But we had a president with a similar mind set. We needed someone who was more of a realist, not only on the financial front, but who recognized that facilities aren't a " build it and they we come" concept that Bill portrayed. Wouldn't it have been far better had Floyd said to Bill, universities become great by the people they hire, not the structures they build. Yes, we need to keep up with the Jones's, but we need a vision that has better balance. Go back and give me a plan that better does that.
We are fortunate that Bill hired "a" coach that is very good, and that coach is his own worst enemy on the career advancement front. But it has been 40 years since we won a national title, 16 years since we won a conference crown, and top to bottom we remain the worst athletic program in the conference by a wide margin --- and we are now saddled with a debt (unlike Cal) we have no hope in hell of paying back.
We are fortunate that Bill hired "a" coach that is very good, and that coach is his own worst enemy on the career advancement front. But it has been 40 years since we won a national title, 16 years since we won a conference crown, and top to bottom we remain the worst athletic program in the conference by a wide margin --- and we are now saddled with a debt (unlike Cal) we have no hope in hell of paying back.
The accrued deficit will not be paid back, and there is no reason to even discuss whether it should be.
The bonds used to fund the facilities will be paid.
Personally, I believe that WSU did the right thing in upgrading the facilities and we are in a much better position for the money spent. Nobody knew in 2011 that we would still not have a deal with DirecTV for the Pac-12 network and that by itself hurts us every year. The other subsidies are money well spent in my opinion. Businesses and organizations spend millions of dollars per year advertising their products and WSU does as well. Throwing money at football is no different than any other advertising that they do and if some of that money ends up helping pay for the facility improvements, so be it.
I think it was important for Schulz to do a reset and re-evaluation to make sure that we didn't bury ourselves so deep that we can't get out, but that doesn't mean that some of the decisions in the past weren't the right ones at the time. I'd love to see us increase our stadium capacity to 45k in the next 10 years but that's obviously something that is off the table for the forseeable future and I can live with that.
Well, we now have the second nicest FOB in the conference and one mid range and three bottom rung recruiting classes demonstrating its 67 million value. Sadly it has been recruiting bust. Of course "cranky grandpa" Leach hasn't helped. Thank heaven the man doesn't need to recruit well to win.
The money had to be spent. End of discussion. Now it has to be paid back. More than fair.
I dont think WSU has ever had an effective plan to win its backyard first. I think its always had eyes on the Puget Sound. Which isnt unreasonable. I think the Puget Sound made clear its intentions on its level of support when the Seattle game clunked.
The truth of the matter is that they need butts in seats and to farm their donors. Honestly, have they done a good job of developing either? They cant fill the smallest stadium in the conference when theyve got 20,000 students and locals in town. Really?? They have spent the last 100 years doing nothing to farm the students, which turn into alums, into donors.
So here they are. Desparately trying to play catch up. Start with the low hanging fruit. There is plenty of it.
I dont think WSU has ever had an effective plan to win its backyard first. I think its always had eyes on the Puget Sound. Which isnt unreasonable. I think the Puget Sound made clear its intentions on its level of support when the Seattle game clunked.
The truth of the matter is that they need butts in seats and to farm their donors. Honestly, have they done a good job of developing either? They cant fill the smallest stadium in the conference when theyve got 20,000 students and locals in town. Really?? They have spent the last 100 years doing nothing to farm the students, which turn into alums, into donors.
So here they are. Desparately trying to play catch up. Start with the low hanging fruit. There is plenty of it.
Another guy who believes in recruiting websites and their evaluations over actual coaches evaluations. Go check UCLA’s W/L records the last few years vs. their beautiful ⭐️ rankings.
I'm not so sure about the backyard thing. We have the largest student section, %-wise, of anyone. And we tend to fill it, at least for the first half of games. And there are a lot of local ticket holders and donors. But you aren't going to interest everyone in a town full of professors and farmers and not much else.
We are currently pretty much selling out our shrinking stadium. Getting butts into the reserved seats is an ongoing problem. It does mystify me that we could often fill the place when it held 7,000 more people so something is missing. Pricing isn't helping - it is a common phenomenom to see the endzone full and the reserved side half full.
No more Coug-aire, I think fewer busses, expensive rooms. None of this helps.
You're confusing talent evaluation with recruiting. Recruit is signing kids that are in high demand. Talent evaluation is signing kids who can help you. Drew Bledsoe and Mark Rypien were highest valued recruits WSU has ever signed. Luke Falk was a walk on, i.e. no one thought him worth a scholarship. He turned out to be a better college QB. The former is recruiting, the latter us talent evaluation, or the lack thereof. Leach is great at the latter, sub par at the former. Ideally you do both well, because you have a deeper talent pool to choose from.
Backyard = Spokane, Yakima, Tri Cities and students/locals.
Stadium seats how many? 40,000? And they cant sell it out consistently.
My point about 20,000 locals is that half the stadium should be filled without anyone having to travel in to town for gameday. WSU cant find 20,000 fans in Eastern Washington? Hell, add in the Puget Sound. They cant find the balance there too??? Add in PDX Metro. Still cant find enough fans?
I agree that expensive rooms dont help. This is why I think WSU needs to do a better job winning Eastern Washington. The level of investment financially and in time is smaller.
The stadium used to hold 40,000. And filled it many times, albeit only for the big games. Now it holds 33,000.
"WSU can't find 20,000 fans in Eastern Washington" is not what you said (see below). You clearly referred to the backyard and 20,000 fans as being Pullman proper.
Biggs said:
I dont think WSU has ever had an effective plan to win its backyard first.
"They cant fill the smallest stadium in the conference when they've got 20,000 students and locals in town. Really??"
All that said, we should be able to completely fill the stadium with fans from East of Cle Elum. None of them having to stay the night unless they want to. And by backyard, we should include Lewiston/Clarkston and Couer d' Alene. And Harrison, Idaho. At least one ticket holder lives there!
And the way I see it, those E. Washington fans would fill the end zone 2nd deck if the price was reasonable. For the expensive and luxury seats, that where we need the Coug-aire type of scenario for the wet siders. They have enough money to buy the seats/suites, they have enough to pay a couple hundred for a plane ticket. Develop charter agreements from all over. Doesn't have to be Horizon. How many smaller but big enough to be worth renting for a one hour trip planes are sitting around in every airport from Bellingham to Portland? We have Pullman International 5 minutes from the Stadium. And soon-to-be Alaska-less Lewiston down the hill if more room is needed. At least do the outreach I say.
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Official capacity is 32,952.
Average home attendance for 2017 was 31,982 — more than 97 percent of MS capacity. It's fair to say Mr. Moos did a great job of putting butts in the seats prior to his unfortunate exile to Lincoln, Neb.
I'm inclined to agree with those here who believe a Martin Stadium expansion to approximately 50,000 in conjunction with completion of the new Indoor Practice Facility/upgrade of the current "practice bubble" would be another huge step forward in WSU's commitment to CML and big-time football.
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I don't think anyone wants a "big stadium" but getting another 12,000 seats is something we should want in the long term. Anything beyond that would be silly in my opinion.
Pete, Pete, Pete.
Moos' great effort in "filling" Martin Stadium is nothing to be admired. Go to the last Media Guide (link below):
http://wsucougars.com/documents/2017/8/4/2017_Football_Media_Guide_Color.pdf
The 25th best crowd at Martin is a full 2,000 fans more than the current capacity. 3,000 more than Moos' great accomplishment.
And you and "those here" who want 50,000 seats are a group of probably about.....one. Some of us do want to get at least to 40,000. About the achievable capacity if we do a 2nd deck bowl. For which the foundation has already been poured. Thanks to Sterk for that much foresight.
Rightly or wrongly, I will remain an unabashed supporter of Mr. Moos and his tenure at Washington State University until the end of time.
It was his vision that returned WSU Football to the big time.
To me, critics be damned, Mr. Moos is the definition of a Great Coug (or CouGreat as Brand X called 'em).
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I don't disagree at all. But Sterk had the right idea. He did get the stadium upgrade started, just didn't strike hard enough while the iron was hot. But laying the groundwork for the bowl addition was a good move. All the endzone improvements were made with that as a next step.
The amount of $ your school spends on football is body language. It is non verbal communication to recruits and fans about how serious you are about being successful. If spending less money and having a smaller stadium worked, why is Alabama winning? How did Oregon go from nowhere to somewhere? A few years back I looked at what school every 4 and 5 star recruit on the West Coast went to and how big their stadium capacity was. Guess how many of them went to a school with a stadium that sat less than 50,000? 1 kid.
It is this type of thinking that has ruined WSU. Less = less. Build it to 75,000. Bring your binoculars.
Can you imagine where WSU Football would be right now if the largest football stadium in the entire PNW was situated in Pullman?
Probably be a few more Rose Bowl trophies in the WSU trophy case.
Correct. See UCLA (lately). Lots of good points and valid arguments. No right or wrong answers. The perfect storm of winning, brilliant marketing in Spokane and all of Eastern WA, Phil knightish donor out of nowhere, etc, etc, and a 70K seat stadium could be filled to capacity in Pullman. The perfect shitstorm of dreadful recruiting, lazy fundraising, poor leadership, terrible coaching, etc. etc. and you have 100 people in the stands in your 32K stadium while USC is kneeling on your 10 yard line....before halftime.
All that said, we should be able to completely fill the stadium with fans from East of Cle Elum. None of them having to stay the night unless they want to. And by backyard, we should include Lewiston/Clarkston and Couer d' Alene. And Harrison, Idaho. At least one ticket holder lives there!
Attending games in Pullman without spending the night SUCKS for anyone who doesn’t live in Whitman county. It’s a minimum of an 80+ mile one-way drive for everyone, which makes for an 9-15 hour day for the round trip diehards. Worse yet, it means little to no drinking for a designated driver. Know a lot of Diehard Coug football fans who don’t drink a bit on game day? Me either.
So how does this relate to game attendance? It means that fans are opting for TV viewing parties at home or at their local Coug bar instead of driving to Pullman. That’s precisely why we *used to* sell up to 40K tickets years ago, while today we barely sell out 32k tickets.
The TV era and the fact that all games are now televised has allowed many fans to tap out. Booking crappy hotels for $200+/night, 8 months in advance is too much for most people to deal with. Honestly, the thought of watching games at home gets more appealing with each passing year. It’s not only the cost and labor for me treking to Pullman, but also the vacation time lost from work; at least a full week/year.
Don’t gloss over the geographic challenges that WSU faces. They will eventually doom our program.
UCLA has 35,000 empty seats every week. Doesnt bother them. They play in the Rose Bowl every other week.
It would be 50,000 in for about half our games.
Why spend the $100+ million on something the program does not need? Why not spend it on a new indoor facility, an increased recruiting budget, more money for assistants to demonstrate investment and commitment to the program?
I don't know if we are "doomed" because the reality is that football attendance around the country is dropping in general.
Washington Post Article on attendance declines
According to the report, this is the fourth straight year where average attendance has declined. If anything, TV has helped with leveling the playing field and that will continue to happen as long as we are good enough where people want to watch us (and the rest of the Pac-12). If Leach sticks around and WSU can continue to churn out 8+ win seasons most of the time, you'll see a slow buildup of the fanbase and there will come a time when we think that it's time to expand the stadium again.
Pullman is unusual in that it's a very small town that's remote and doesn't have much for hotel availability on game days. However, when talking about population within "X" number of miles, there are other schools that face similar challenges to Pullman. Texas Tech made four stadium expansions based on the success that Leach had there and increased their stadium capacity by 10,000 in a decade. I used a free tool on the internet and there are 712,000 people within 100 miles of Lubbock and 1.1 million within 120 miles. Pullman has just under a million people within 100 miles of the city and just over 1.3 million within 120 miles. Now, highway access is not as good to Pullman and that's a factor, and people in Texas care just a smidge more about football than folks in Washington State do, but nevertheless, we can get 40,000 people in Pullman if the team is doing well for an extended period.
We aren't doomed.....although we will always be the smaller fish in a big pond.
Traffic sucks for a lot of schools. WSU might be more distance, other places might have gridlock that balances out the travel time.
For the long term, WSU needs to be a Spokane and Eastern Washington game day experience. For reasons you stated, it is just not feasible to expect the masses to invest so much time and money, so many times per year.
I completely understand the argument for not having a huge stadium when you cannot fill a smaller stadium. I get it. The people making that argument dont understand or refuse to understand, the messaging and non verbal communication that facilites send. Alabama has a ridiculously enormous weight room. What does that tell recruits when they tour it? It sets the tone for what is expected. It sends a message about how serious they are. You walk away knowing exactly what the work ethic is.
If there are still people that refuse to see what the infusion of money into WSU has done for the wins and losses recently, WSU is better off without them. They are not the future. They do not share a vision of what needs to be done. They need to move on and take their cancer with them.
Honestly, the same could be said for any academic department on campus as well. Do not let someone’s negativity or low ceiling or lack of direction or vision poison your department. Move them on down the road. Maybe one day they wake up and get it. Welcome back! But dont let them stick around and ruin things with their ignorance and bad attitude.
Good thread. Coupla comments:
Patrol's post - I get that. I like to drink too, and would not want to weave back to Richland or WW after a game. Neither would everyone else on the road. It would be interesting to see how much time it takes a typical big-market fan (let's say uw?) to get to a game round trip. Let's say you lived in Redmond or Renton. What are they, 10 miles from the mistake by the lake? Or how about a UCLA fan to go to the Rose Bowl if they don;t actually live in Pasadena.
For those in E. Washington - what about the charter buses? do they even exist anymore? That would solve a lot of problems for the fun-loving fan. And that is something that WSU Athletics could work on. Offer charters at a break-even cost for Athletics, knowing you made your money on thickets and the concessions. And future donations?
Agree 110% on TV killing attendance everywhere and in every sport.
Biggs - did Tron hijack your login? Perhaps you should have just said they should die of cancer.
Biggs said:
WSU is better off without them. They are not the future. They do not share a vision of what needs to be done. They need to move on and take their cancer with them.
IMHO, Martin Stadium is embarrassingly small. That we can agree on, and is why I continually rag on the need for the second deck in the bowl. Even 40,000 is pretty embarrassing, but at least it would "look" bigger. And be a better atmosphere. It would not cost that much.
Doom = to condemn to certain destruction or death
CougPatrol, I don't understand this prediction at all. WSU has faced geographic isolation (or whatever might be the correct terminology) ever since the Cougs stepped into the arena of big-time College Athletics.
More often than not, WSU has competed for championships or at least been competitive in its efforts.
Why would you expect it to be any different — or more specifically, worse — moving forward?
LoyalCoug, allow me to politely disagree on this particular point.
MS's capacity may be a shade under 33K, but how could anyone be embarrassed by the sight/site below:
Now this, on the other hand, is embarrassing:
Or this:
I'd love to see Martin Stadium expanded to 65K in the near future as much as the next guy.
But even at half that size, it remains an intimate, crowd-friendly and first-class venue for College Football.
Not sure if Coug-a-Tron is available today, but he (or she) usually has some very strong takes on building the WSU brand.
This thread would be right down that alley.
This thread would be right down that alley.
Speaking for UW, Bay Area, LA, and Phoenix fans, they don’t have to deal with traffic. UW has awesome public transit to home games, and like every big city, there’s always the UBER option.
Getting to Pullman is nearly impossible for a spontaneous, hey, let’s go to the Coug next weekend, fan. That’s the biggest different between. Us and Them.
Getting to Pullman is nearly impossible for a spontaneous, hey, let’s go to the Coug next weekend, fan. That’s the biggest different between. Us and Them.
Ummmmmm......they don't have to deal with traffic? LA is always known for its traffic. If you want to go watch a game at the Rose Bowl and live 40 miles away....."across town".....you may need to budget 2 hours to make that drive. If you live outside Seattle, you still have to drive to the pubic transit spots to use them. then you get to wait in line while they try to cram people onto that public transit at the end of the game. I took the train when we went to the ASU game and it was good......if you live along the narrow strip that it runs. Now, I agree that it's less inconvenient than driving over the pass for games, but it's not like you look at the clock and say, "Hey, the game is on in a couple hours....let's run over" when you are going to a game at any of the schools you listed.
Yes it is a surprise to me to learn that there is no traffic in Seattle or LA. Guess things have changed since I was there last (Seattle, 2 weeks ago). But unlike (apparently) Patrol, I don't attend many uw games (none ever) so I can't comment on that experience. I don't think that UBER drivers have any magical talent to avoid traffic, but maybe they have their own express lane.
Also, this discussion was meant to compare a big market fan's commute to a game to an Eastern Washington fans commute (Spokane, WW, Tri-Cities). From those locations, yes you can wake up and say "let's go to the WSU game" and get there in a semi-reasonable time.
And transit? read back to my questions about charter buses from E. Washington cities...….do they still exist?
