Friends hook up

The Robb Akey you see on the sidelines? The leaping, legs-splayed, fist-pumping, headset-flying acrobat who’s his own SportsCenter Top 10? Well, Bill Doba knows that very same Robb Akey from the fishing hole, too.

“When he loses a fish, the entire lake knows it,” Doba laughed. “The pole is splashing in the water and the words you can’t print echo all over the lake. And every time, not just once in a while, it’s the fish’s fault.

“And then when he hooks one, when he starts finning – he’s in a float tube – the back of the tube comes out of the water he’s finning so hard. He damned near drowns the fish before he gets it.”

Fish stories. The best ones are told by the best of friends, and Robb Akey and Bill Doba are certainly that – and will be, even as they face each other for the first time from opposite sidelines when the Idaho Vandals and Washington State Cougars meet at Martin Stadium in Pullman on Saturday night.

Akey spent eight years at WSU as Doba’s lieutenant – first as defensive line coach when Doba coordinated the defense, then as DC when Doba was elevated to head coach. After Dennis Erickson threw the Vandals over the side last winter and Idaho athletic director Rob Spear approached Akey about becoming the head coach, it was Doba with whom he shared the news about two minutes later.

So they’re close, but that’s hardly unusual. Coaching staffs are close by definition, subletting the same foxhole where, as Akey said, “the world’s after you a little bit, so it’s easy to build those bonds.”

Now they’re close but eight miles apart, answering to different fan bases – and for a week at least have to pre-empt the phone calls, the wisecracks and the commiserations and try to figure out a way to beat each other.

“I did talk to him on the phone the other night and told him I’ve been so used to coming out of that (stadium) tunnel and turning left,” Akey said. “If I do that out of habit and end up on the wrong sideline, give me a little nudge and send me across the field so I don’t look out of place.”

On a number of occasions when the Cougars and Vandals met these last 25 years, there has been an easy – or uneasy – familiarity. Assistants at one school had worked for the head coach at another, or in the case of Erickson last year had been head coach at both schools. But the link has never been quite so direct or instant, or the two head coaches so tight.

That was achingly evident this past April 21 – a year to the day from the death of Doba’s wife of 43 years, Judy. Late that morning – after the Vandals had completed one of their spring practices – Robb Akey showed up at his friend’s door.

“He was the one who remembered,” Doba marveled. “That’s the sort of thing that’s priceless.”

For Akey, it was a reflex.

“I know how hard those years had been for him,” Akey said of Judy Doba’s long fight with cancer. “They’d been together forever – not just college sweethearts and husband and wife, they were best friends. I don’t know for how many couples that’s really true. His family, his kids and grandkids, are back in the Midwest and when that day came around, I knew it would be a difficult day for him. I figured he probably didn’t need to be alone.”

Like many close friends, they are not a matched set. Doba is 67, Akey 41. Akey’s relentless energy is external, physical, upbeat – and, yes, loud. Doba is by no means reserved, except maybe by comparison. Akey seems given to broad strokes, Doba to the telling anecdote.

But the competitive motors rev at pretty much the same rate.

And, no, they don’t finish each other’s sentences.

“He used to make me angry in staff meetings,” Doba said. “If we wanted to go 18 periods (in practice), he’d want to go 17. Anytime there was a cloud in the sky, he’d say, ‘How about the indoor facility?’ I think he did it just to get my goat.”

But Doba knew even before former WSU head coach Mike Price added Akey to the staff that meetings would never be the same.

“Mike knew him,” Doba recalled. “Craig Bray (then the secondary coach) had a buddy who came in and interviewed, too, and naturally Bray wanted his buddy to be hired. But about halfway through Akey’s interview, Bray leans over and says, ‘It ain’t even close. This guy has it all.’ “

That echoes how Akey feels about his old boss. Akey appreciated the autonomy he was granted, and especially that Doba feels utterly responsible for the nine families of the assistants tied to his own future “because there’s a bunch of (head coaches) out there who don’t.

“We think an awful lot alike. He was the one who stressed to me that you can be simple and good at what you do and sometimes that’s better than having a whole lot of different answers. He’s a guy who always looks out for the players first and that’s the way you need to be. This business we’re in – they call it a business, but it’s a game. I think you need to make sure it stays a game.”

The next one’s Saturday night.

“I won’t miss him on the sideline,” Doba insisted, “because he’s knocked my glasses off twice. And he damned near knocked me down once.”

Why, you’d have thought another big one had wriggled off the hook.