Smith Made It To Big West, But Not Way UI Expected

Of course, there is an upside to John L. Smith catching the first Lear out of Moscow.

Since he’ll be making more than $100,000 a year as the football coach at Utah State, perhaps the University of Idaho can hit him up to buy a block of those 17,000 tickets it now needs to peddle each fall.

Ooh, these are cynical times - especially as the little world of Vandal athletics turns.

There is a patch of high ground, and it’s from there we can wave a heartfelt adios to Smith - who is not only the winningest coach in Idaho history but pretty near the stayingest, as well. Six years is a lifetime at Stepping Stone U.

Vandal football under Smith was always fun and Smith himself was forthright, as a rule. That’s a fairly rare quinella.

But two weeks ago, John L. Smith was a point man at a press conference extolling the merits of the Vandals’ final, we-promise, no-turning-back-now decision to jump into the Big West Conference. And the tacit understanding in such an appearance was that he would be jumping along with them.

Julie Holt, the women’s basketball coach, was up there with Smith, echoing the company line. But her husband, Nick, is a part of Smith’s staff already en route to Utah State, and now she can only promise she’ll stay until season’s end.

Behind every good Big West advocate, it would seem, is a good Realtor.

OK, so stuff happens. Two weeks ago, no one knew that Utah State coach Charlie Weatherbie would bolt to a job at Navy, and that Aggies athletic director Chuck Bell would have his heart set on hiring Smith.

But two weeks ago, John L. was just as burned out, just as stale, just as frustrated - the pivotal factors he listed in his decision to leave. And just as open to listen to offers.

There’s a difference between speaking your mind and speaking from the heart, and we need to remember that anytime we’re tempted to take notes at a press conference.

Beyond that, the fact that Smith lunged at Utah State’s offer is just the latest corroboration that Idaho’s lust for upward mobility - such as it is - has been ill-considered and misguided.

And now, alas, irrevocable.

Perhaps all we need to know is that Utah State plays in the very same conference Idaho has opted to join. Would John L. Smith have jumped to another job in the Big Sky?

At Utah State, Smith will get a substantial boost in salary. He’ll recruit to a renovated 30,000-seat stadium that is filled to 80 percent capacity or better most Saturdays.

He’ll also be assuming the reins of a football program that has had but one winning season - at 7-5, no less - in the last 13. The Aggies do hold their own in the Big West, however; they represented the conference in the Las Vegas Bowl in 1993.

Still, from a competitive standpoint, the program Smith leaves is in better shape than the program he assumes. So why leave?

The man has his reasons, most of which he won’t go public with. He is known to be frustrated with the Idaho administration’s indecisiveness in taking the Big West plunge.

But it goes beyond campus. Smith has fielded some of the best teams in Idaho history, to generally lukewarm public response. At a time when attendance at Big Sky rivals Montana and Boise State has surged, Idaho’s has remained stagnant - and even, in some cases, lagged.

Smith - like Keith Gilbertson and Dennis Erickson before him - has discovered an atmosphere of expectation at Idaho, often without commensurate support.

And yet this is the time the school has chosen to throw in with what it perceives to be the big boys. It will have to do it saddled with the brand of a I-AA school competing and recruiting against I-A brothers, a disadvantage no matter how the proponents slice it. It will do it with a puny stadium, barely half full. It will do it despite the lack of public demand.

And now it will do it without one of the pied pipers who sold the right people on the idea.

John L. Smith had the right and possibly even the duty to jump at a new challenge, though the challenge he faced at Idaho was greater and every bit as new. Chances are, he will not be the last of those pied pipers to seek new and better-paying challenges.

Just as we have the right to be cynical.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review