wsu-cgd102115
The wallops just keep coming for Washington State, which lost Jimmy Rogers on Friday evening (to Iowa State) after a whopping 342 days on the job.
If you’re scoring at home, here’s the tally for WSU:
No head coach.
No athletic director to hire the next head coach.
No conference, at least in the traditional sense (until July).
No hope.
Actually, about that last part: It’s wrong. WSU has hope. The timing of Rogers’ departure seems much worse than it is.
If they play this right, the Cougars might even emerge in better shape than they were Friday morning, before Iowa State coach Matt Campbell took the Penn State job and the Cyclones moved quickly to grab Rogers.
Because while WSU is currently without a permanent athletic director, it does have a president, Elizabeth Cantwell, who cares about football.
And because there are quality candidates available.
And because the Cougars always recover from blows that seem debilitating.
They fired Nick Rolovich in the middle of the 2021 season for not complying with a COVID vaccine mandate for state employees, regrouped under interim coach Jake Dickert, won the Apple Cup, jammed a flag in the Husky Stadium turf and went bowling.
They lost quarterback Cam Ward to the transfer portal and replaced him with John Mateer.
They lost coach Dickert to Wake Forest and Mateer to the transfer portal, replaced them with Rogers and Zevi Eckhaus and are bowling yet again.
They have been bowl-eligible in nine of the past 11 seasons despite churning through four head coaches, a pandemic and all the other talent-acquisition challenges present in the Palouse.
And they will be fine in the post-Rogers era. They will contend in the new Pac-12 and remain relevant regionally … if they play this right:
— First move: Cantwell must approve the expenditure of more cash than the Cougars paid for Rogers and his staff, and her track record suggests that’s a distinct possibility.
In her previous life, Cantwell ran the show at Utah State and was the driving force behind the Aggies’ move into the Pac-12 in September 2024 and the subsequent decision to hire coach Bronco Mendenhall away from New Mexico.
Utah State agreed to pay Mendenhall $2.2 million per year against an athletic department budget of just $35 million, according to financial filings through the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act.
Three weeks later, the Cougars hired Rogers for $1.6 million annually (against a budget of $68 million, per the EADA).
Sure, Utah State had to lure Mendenhall out of Albuquerque, which is the point: Cantwell spent what she needed to spend to get the coach she wanted.
She did not fire WSU athletic director Anne McCoy last month because she intends to field a mediocre football program and oversee a second-rate athletic department.
— Second move: Place another call to Albuquerque and make Mendenhall’s replacement, Jason Eck, say no.
He will.
— Third move: Call Jonathan Smith, who was just dismissed by Michigan State but worked wonders for Oregon State, and make him say no.
He will, probably.
(Same with Justin Wilcox, who was cut loose by Cal recently and reportedly spoke to Oregon State about its vacancy.)
— Fourth move: Call former WSU defensive coordinator Brian Ward, who’s now at Arizona State and has crafted one of the best defenses in the Big 12 the past two years, and make him say no.
He will, most likely.
— Fifth move: Call Montana State coach Brent Vigen, whose Bobcats are in the FCS playoffs, and make him say no.
He might.
If he does, ignore the response and sweeten the offer.
Vigen is the guy for the Cougars.
He knows the region, recruits better than Montana State has the right to expect, spent years learning from an under-appreciated master, Craig Bohl, and is currently wrapping up a fifth consecutive stellar season in Bozeman. The Bobcats are 57-12 under his watch entering their second-round playoff date with Yale today.
WSU could have hired Vigen a year ago — Dickert departed in mid-December — but Montana State was in the middle of a playoff run that continued through the transfer window.
But the dynamics have changed. So, too, have the transfer rules.
Why is WSU’s timing less awful than it appears? Because in October, the NCAA created a one-time transfer portal that does not open until Jan. 2, just three days before the FCS championship game.
Ah, but there’s even more working in WSU’s favor: For schools without a head coach, players must wait five days after the replacement is hired before entering the portal.
Which means the Cougars could let Vigen finish with the Bobcats, even if their postseason seeps into January, without losing their roster to the portal.
Granted, many players would (unofficially) explore options and map out contingency plans. But the Cougars could, in theory, hire Vigen on Jan. 6-7 and allow him to address the players before they formally plunge into the portal. That could enable WSU to avoid a full restart.
Thanks to the portal changes, they have the time that did not exist last year.
Thanks to Cantwell’s presence, they have the administrative backing to dangle more lucrative offers than they did last year.
And thanks to some strange alchemy in the Palouse — a mix of traditional and fortune, savvy and foresight — they have a recent history of shrugging off blows that seem debilitating.
After all the twists of the past four years, WSU might have one more in store: Emerging from Rogers’ departure with a brighter forecast for life in the rebuilt Pac-12.
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Originally published at Jon Wilner