Letters to the editor: Washington State football doesn’t belong in Lewiston

Please justify another WSU football camp in Lewiston

Lewiston again. Really?

Hear we go again. Time for college football fall “training camps.” And so our Cougs once again head down to Lewiston for the opportunity to practice on a junior high school field, lift weights in subpar facilities and set up a makeshift (first-class) training table feeding over 85 players, all coaches, graduate assistants, equipment staff, AV personnel and all other support staff (not to mention all the vehicles and manpower it takes to get it all down there) for seven days “without distractions.”

Whatever happened to the brand new multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art Coug football complex the was so “vital and necessary” to remain competitive? Last time I checked, the ’ol Cougs have it. With an approximate $13.5-million dollar deficit hanging over the athletic department (last year alone), do we really need to rough it out in Lewiston for a week while our state-of-the-art pro-turf fields, weight rooms and building facilities go idle?

Given that our president has committed our general fund to picking up a “portion” of the financial deficit, it just kinda smells bad when the athletic department approves another “field trip” with no tangible benefit (head coach Mike Leach will surly agree on this one), then takes no fiscal responsibility. Our Cougs have stumbled badly out of the gate these past few years to lesser (subdivision) teams that “camped” in their own back yards, then came into Coug country and succeeded without any wildly expensive “training camps.” Please justify the expense.

Tom Richardson

Spokane