I don’t know that there would be a “mass exodus”. I think you maybe overestimate how loyal the players are to Rolovich.
What happens on 10/18?
- Thread starter EdmondsCoug
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There is already a mass exodus. The exodus of our best players happens at the end of the year as they eat up their eligibility . Lucas, Borghi, McIntosh, Harris, Ryan(needs to move back to guard), Greene(can’t send to unseat CG at center… and I don’t know why) Watson, Langford, Isom and our best defender our MLB. Add in depth (not saying it is quality depth) Hobbs and you have a lot of parts to replace anyway .
I’m not a fan of the mandate but Rolo is a complete and utter dip shyt for the way he has handled this.
Last week, Renard Bell tweeted "If ya'll got a problem with my coach, unfollow me." and it was retweeted by most of the young players. JDL, Hobert, etc.
There are a lot of players who privately empathize with the stance against getting vaxed. Will there be a mass exodus? I don't know. It always depends on who the replacement is.
Eh, Twitter tea leaves are difficult to read. Of course players are going to publicly support the coach and there's always some element of "defend the team" no matter how bad a coach is. Kids will transfer if they think they've got a better shot to play elsewhere.
Will there be some defections? Sure, there always are. "Mass exodus" as in 20-30 guys leaving? I doubt it. And, any coach that comes in may come with a few transfers of his own. May not even be a bad thing.
This won't happen simply because there won't be places for most of those guys to go.
A lot of guys found out their market value when the phone didnt ring.
Where did Ayden Hector wind up?
Yes. He would have played every game at WSU the rest of his career and had a ton of game film for the NFL to evaluate.
My original statement was Nothing is going to happen on October 18. If he's vaxxed, nothing is going to happen. If he's not vaxxed, see above - they aren't going to fire him immediately on that date and, again, nothing is going to happen on October 18.
Now, they might 'suspend' him on administrative leave -but he's not getting fired over his vaccination status on/about that date.
The school is better to wink wink, nod nod and let the ship run aground because nothing I've seen indicates there is another win in the tank based on what other schools around the conference are doing.
At 1-11, there's a unified fan base. Terminated on 10/18, Rolo becomes a martyr.
Martyr to who? So are you saying our season tix will go from 12k to 6 k because we keep a guy who doesn't show the leadership people want. Will donations pick up from King County to offset the donations lost in eastern Washington? Schultz runs a school with a medical program, that studies data. Over 90% of the ICU and hospital cases are for unvaxed people across the country. How does anyone square that math is beyond me, but I don't think someone who is a head of a school that has a new med school wants to be the laughing stock of the conference. That is the hill people want to die on? So be it.
It is what it is....if they are going to fire him at the end of the season, and I believe they will, I certainly don't see why Schultz will wait. He can use the excuse we suck...wink wink, and it had to do with the direction and leadership of the program.
At this point, provided that Rolo remains unvaccinated, Schulz has the deck stacked in his favor in terms of reasons to make a change. He can place him on administrative leave, he can point to the distraction that's it's caused the program, he can point to the lack-luster performance on the field, he can cite nearly unanimous booster animosity against Rolo. There's no shortage of ammo to get rid of him.
One thing all message board fans do (myself included), is minimize how difficult the decision is to remove a head coach with less than 3 years on the job. It's not just the professional admission that you and your AD made a bad hire, but all vax stuff aside, Rolo is probably a good person. He certainly had that reputation before he was hired. He sounded incredibly grateful for the opportunity to coach at WSU. He's a Dad, a husband, and the players past and present seem to like him. I bet Schulz and Chun liked him up until the P12 media day story broke.
Apart from handling this situation incredibly poorly, Rolo hasn't been a jerk with the media or made stupid tweets about his reasons and rationale either. He's really put Schulz and Chun in a tough position, particularly given our precarious financial standing.
There is also the part where the state will have a far superior legal team than Rolo. Good luck to him with that lawsuit.
I think removing him is institutional suicide for WSU. An Athletic Department that is consistently underfunded is now going to terminate a coach after 1 season and four games? Your best case scenario is a pool of Paul Wulff clones as potential replacements.
I look at football coaching like a sales gig. Sometimes you get people who are initially great personalities and after 6 months, for some reason, they're not cutting it, and they're going to get the axe. Is it fair? Depends on the situation, but if the numbers aren't showing, managers don't care, as all they care about are numbers (wins). He was handed a good sales region (some solid talent) and he hasn't done anything to improve its status (wins, or a trend they will come soon). In fact, it appears he's done the complete opposite.
So although it's a very difficult decision to remove a head coach before three seasons, I think the numbers (wins + other things) aren't adding up great here for the current head coach.
I'm on record as stating he should have just received the vaccination and avoided all of this, but this is as good of a place as any for me to note the absurdity of this "WSU has a medical school, and it's a slap in the face to WSU as a result if Rolo is unvaccinated" line of argument, and especially the extension of that to claim that this somehow insults Elson Floyd or his legacy. Again, Rolo has made a foolish move that I don't support, but some of this is not merely a stretch, but ridiculous. So if this was 10 years ago and WSU didn't have a med school, he would be more justified in ignoring scientific evidence, but since WSU has a med school, that somehow changes things? And because a good man most admired pushed for that school, this decision by Rolovich has anything to do with him? Anyone spewing that kind of overwrought bullshit should realize that it cuts against their argument by hurting their credibility, rather than supporting whatever argument they are trying to make, and detracts from meaningful discussion.
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It absolutely is a sales gig. You are selling the program to boosters who fund it, and recruits who you need to join your team to win. And usually you know pretty quickly whether someone has the chops to succeed in your business, so you cut bait and move on as soon as you know. It doesn’t do anyone any good to hang on. Now most sales gigs are performance based and you don’t get paid well unless you perform, so there’s built in financial motivation. Coaches at this level get a big dump of cash when they walk through the door that sets them up for life. Rolo comes across to me like a guy who feels like he’s exceeded his life goals and is fat and happy.
Back to the sales gig idea. In my past experience of hiring and unfortunately firing people, the one thing a senior manager told me years ago that I found out to be true the hard way. If you feel someone is not going to work out, the sooner you remove them the better off everyone is. As for this coaching situation, let the season play out and speak for itself. If it is 10/18 or 11/30 it doesn't matter that much, waiting until next year, if you don't think it is working, is an issue.
The only counterpoint I would have for that is recruiting. It’s difficult enough to recruit in Pullman, it’s going to be a serious uphill battle with a lame duck coach. And if he knows he’s a lame duck, he isn’t going to be recruiting for shit. And a bad recruiting class sets you back a few years. Not sure why with the constant movement of coaches but a lot of these kids still seem to be committing to coaches rather than to the school/program. If I was a recruit I’d go into every visit with the assumption that the current coaches would not be there the entirety of my career, because usually they aren’t…but that doesn’t seem to be how most of them look at the process.
I've spent virtually my entire career in medical sales & sales management. Very competitive, sometimes cutthroat, and I agree with a lot of what you wrote. One of my former CEOs used to similar. "The goal is to hire A-level sales people. You can sometimes coach and manage a B-level sales person to become an A-level performer, but you can never turn a C-level rep into a B-level performer. The sooner you recognize that, the quicker you can recover and retool."
Now, with that said, this corporate mindset would be completely different if sales reps were hired under 4-year contracts with lucrative buyout clauses. It would, in many cases, make financial sense to keep a C-level rep and allow them to maintain their sales territory provided they weren't doing harm and damaging relationships. For example, a C-level rep may only reach 85% of their annual sales quota, but if you had to buy them out and re-hire someone else (who carries the same unknowns as the outgoing rep), the potential benefit you'd get if they blow out there number at 110% to goal would be mitigated by the buyout you'd have to pay the outgoing rep + the risk of the new rep NOT achieving that level of performance.
The issue with keeping Rolo is that, given all of the negative PR surrounding his vaccine stance + the poor (so far) results on the field, he probably falls into the category of "doing harm and damaging relationships (recruiting/donors/etc). If he gets the vaccine, even at the 11th hour, WSU will probably keep him through next season. If he doesn't, then I can see him being placed on administrative leave and subsequently dismissed at seasons end.
They need to fire and hire as fast as possible. The home games for visits are burned.
This is the heart of the crossroads the program faces. Rolo is clearly needing to bring in the type of players who fit what he wants to accomplish on the field. OL will be shorter, stouter and more able to pull for the blocks. RB's will be battering rams shaped like bowling balls. WR's will be burners. QB's will be shorter and more mobile. The physical profile of our offense is changing. If you don't believe he's the guy, you need to cut bait now. If you do then give him the necessary time to get his people in place.
Case Information
21-2-00411-36 | William Cleary et al vs Jay Inslee et alCase Number
21-2-00411-36
Court
Walla Walla
File Date
09/10/2021
Case Type
TTO Tort - Other
Case Status
Active
Rolo can join this one ...
The celebrity Cougs don't like the last 2 coaches.
Ian Furness would rather have his son play for Paul Wulff on scholly or PWO than have Leach and certainly Rolo around and also pay for Whitworth.
This is about jobs, access, world view. Got nothing to do with W-L.
Rather have no-guilt tail gating at our Super Spreader events (as Fauci called CFB awhile back).
As for Banks: he has coached all but 1 yr this century in a Red State.
Mike Lowry was raised in Whitman County and Inslee spent longer in Yakima County than Banks did in Pullman.
And Thurston County judges rarely rule against the "State" or interests of the ruling party.
I don’t understand the administrative leave comments. The way I understand it, if you work for the state (State Patrol, WSDOT ….) and you aren’t vaccinated or have an exemption by Oct 18th your out of a job period. I don’t see how they could treat Rolo differently. What am I missing?
Has it? Odyssey doesn't seem to indicate that. The latest shows the hearing for summary judgement is on 10/11 at 0930.
It won't matter much because the margin of those recruited because he's going to retain his job and the perception that he is a lame duck is so small that it may be overcome by a new coach.
Its going to cause a legal battle if they outright can him. They might want to avoid that and either have it go to an arbiter or give him a(nother) chance to comply.
What about the legal battle from the potential thousands of state workers that are fired if Rolo isn’t for the exact same thing? I don’t see how they’d have a choice to treat him differently.
Banks has coached for programs in some red states, but, well, he married an adult entertainer (according to UT boards -- I recall this being discussed when Sark brought him on board, and understand that this is his spouse -- https://twitter.com/dani_andjb -- but I haven't dug in more there, honest) and he's a California guy. I think he would have a lot of, uh, interesting things going on but I don't think the types of "red state" issues that I believe are being alluded to would be relevant here. Sounds like a very interesting guy.
Apparently. But I wasn't there. https://komonews.com/news/local/as-...rs-battle-over-where-the-case-should-be-heard
It depends on your job classification. Anyone who violates the mandate will receive a letter after close of business on the 18th that places them on administrative leave pending disciplinary proceedings. Depending on classification, so will be paid leave, some will be unpaid. For most of those who are unpaid, the "disciplinary proceeding" will essentially be a separation. There will be an appeal process, but it's not likely anyone will win an appeal.
