I think too many of you are giving up vs. trying to make it work.
You know how you can guarantee WSU's failure? By quitting. Quit buying tickets. Quit coming to games. Quit donating.
You want to be 100% right and be able to tell everyone you're 100% right? Have everyone quit and see where it goes.
You all act like something is FORCING you to quit.
It's all on you and it's sad.
WSU Football isn't K-Mart. WSU Basketball isn't Blockbuster.
WSU is WSU
I’ve
been making it work. But I’m not going to continue to knock myself out to stay in a one-sided relationship that no longer provides enjoyment.
I’ve steadily upped my tickets and donations since I graduated. I upped both in 2008-2011 while others left in droves. I’m in the top 2,000 in the CAF.
Through the whole time, WSU only asked for one thing - more - while doing nothing to improve the experience for fans. Gameday in Pullman in 2023 was pretty similar to Gameday in Pullman in 1985.
The landscape has changed. WSU has been forced to devalue the fans who actually show up, moving more and more games to late starts, Fridays and Thursdays. It already takes effort to get to Pullman, and those moves guarantee that fewer people will make it - but WSU has to do it for the money.
The biggest problem though, is that the game has changed. Well, not the game - the business. We used to be able to watch players come up and develop into solid players. We could project that next year or the year after we’re going to be pretty good. That’s gone. CFB is 100% mercenary now, every year. I stopped watching NFL because ~25% of players turned mercenary every year. NIL has turned CFB into a non-stop auction house.
Realignment has also left the deck hopelessly stacked against WSU. If we have a good year and land a CFP berth, they’ll raid our rosters and then change the rules so it won’t happen again. The conferences, NCAA, and networks are colluding to make sure that nobody from outside gets in. Doesn’t matter how many tickets we sell or how much we donate, we’re not one of the chosen ones.
It used to be that on a Saturday morning, I jumped in the car without hesitation and made the drive. I’d look forward to the game all week, watch the interviews and projections, listen to the pre-game, watch the game, listen to the post-game on the way home. That hasn’t been the case for a while now. The last couple seasons I actually dreaded the drive. Last fall there were a couple times I didn’t even bother - I knew the frustration of watching our overrated QB and our underperforming offense would exceed any entertainment value, and I didn’t want to waste 5-6 hours in the car for that.
I’m just not that invested anymore. With roster turnover every year, there’s no connection with the players. I think that’s a big difference between WSU fans and the Big 10/SEC fans. They’re all about the wins from year to year. Their successes are seasons and teams - they only care about the players to the extent that they serve the teams, except when there’s a tremendous standout. WSU fans engage with individual players. I can mention Ron Childs, Scott Davis, Jeremy Bohannon, Jared Karstetter, Andy Mattingly, Dwight Tardy, Tim Stallworth, Kerry Porter, Ron Ricard, and Don Sasa - and you all know who they are and roughly when they played, even though none of them played much past WSU. NIL- related roster turnover destroys that connection.
Whatever the explanation is, All of this together means that it’s just not that much fun anymore. It’s been clear for years that CFB in general and WSU in particular would prefer that I was on my couch, not in the stands - and I will be. I’ll watch 1 game per week, and I don’t care about the rest. I know that athletics is going to take a huge hit, but there’s nothing that can stop that, and my donations aren’t going to make a dent. That hole is going to continue to grow, especially if the WSU AD doesn’t get a lot better at financial management really fast.
I think going forward my money will have better impact if it’s directed toward the academic side of WSU, and that’s where it’s going. In the end, that’s the reason WSU is there, and is the part that needs to be preserved.
