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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

WSU vs. EWU long overdue

John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review

Not to stir the pot or anything, but … OK, let’s stir it.

Washington State needs to stop ducking Eastern Washington in football.

Whoa! And there goes the soup all over the stovetop and down into the burner coils. What a mess.

Hey, it’s all in fun. The Cougars open the 2007 football season with a trip to Wisconsin, which is in everybody’s Top 10 this fall, and they play in the most rugged conference this side of Les Miles’ overwrought provincialism. So obviously courage is not on E this or any other year at Wazzu, and we’re persuaded that the Cougars will gladly take on all-comers.

Which they just proved by scheduling Portland State in 2008.

Kidding. Only kidding.

Look, there’s still a segment of the population out there in Cougistan that simply can’t understand why athletic director Jim Sterk doesn’t bring Florida State, Nebraska and Notre Dame to Pullman in any given year to fill Wazzu’s out-of-conference schedule. The idea of “stooping” to play an NCAA Division I-AA team just doesn’t go down easy with this crowd, never mind that 68 Division I-A teams will do just that this fall – including 12 of the USA Today/ESPN preseason Top 25.

It’s a function of the college football food chain and the realities of putting together a 12-game schedule. Yes, there are a number of programs that can manage to fill a dance card without the I-AAs, but their resources and their appeal as “destination opponents,” if you will, are considerably beyond that of WSU.

And it’s even more complicated for the Cougars in 2008. A season-ending trip to Hawaii gives them a chance to play 13 games, and it’s the desire of coach Bill Doba to cut back on his yearly diet of Idaho to once every three or four. So the Vandals are out and Portland State is in.

But Paul Wulff is one of those WSU alums who remains mystified.

See, he’s the coach at Eastern Washington. The Eagles are I-AA, too. They’re in the same conference as Portland State, in fact. More to the point, they’re in the same state as Wazzu.

He thinks that should count for something. And he’s right.

“I’ve tried to play Washington and Washington State,” Wulff said. “I’ve made some attempts every year and they just won’t play us.”

Because?

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “When I first got the job in 2000, (former WSU coach) Mike Price said, ‘You know, we need to play you. If I’m going to play a Big Sky school, we should just play you.’

“And the next two years they played Montana State back to back.”

OK, one of those years was 2001 and the MSU date was hastily arranged to make up for the post-9/11 cancellation of the Colorado game. But the larger point remains. If the Cougars need or desire to play a I-AA team, why Montana State or Portland State and not EWU? We’ll not even go into the issue of playing Grambling State, since Sterk was booking a concert that year and not a football game.

And why pay a guarantee of $300,000 or more to those schools when the Cougars could funnel it to help a program in their own state that competes with them – for recruits or an audience – not at all?

For Sterk, it seems to be a confluence of circumstances.

“One, I think, is that there hasn’t been a big interest from (our) football staff,” he said. “If you have a choice, you don’t want to play your friends, if you will. And when we’ve needed a game like that, there hasn’t been an open time. That could happen in the future. I don’t think I’d be opposed to that.”

It’s true, the Eagles are already scheduled for a “guarantee” game – the term “body bag” seems to have gone out of style – in 2008 at Colorado. Wulff has no desire necessarily to play two in the same year, as he did a year ago when wipeouts at Oregon State and West Virginia put Eastern’s rebuilding team into a death spiral. But if Wulff is continually knocking on the door, surely WSU – which had to anticipate that a I-AA opponent in 2008 was likely – could have committed before Eastern looked elsewhere.

“I was talking to the Kiwanis Club the other day about this,” Wulff said. “In Arizona, the state makes Arizona or Arizona State – one of them – play Northern Arizona every year. Portland State has played both Oregon and Oregon State.”

In fact, new coach Jerry Glanville threatened to take his case to the governor if the Ducks and Beavers decided to stop doing so.

Georgia Tech is playing Samford this year. Indiana’s taking on Indiana State. Northern Iowa gets a crack at Iowa State, and Murray State will take a stab at Louisville. And while the Huskies across the state may not deign to dip a toe into the I-AA pool, consider that Ohio State will play neighbor Youngstown State and will not suffer any long-term damage in prestige.

“There’s really no reason not to,” Wulff said. “We’re not asking for more money than they’d give any other school. It’s a game that would generate more interest locally than any other I-AA game. And I know for our kids, who played with guys who are at those schools, it would be something special.”

So far, nobody’s said that about a game against Portland State.