‘Tis The Season To Alter Wazzu’s Football Schedule

To avoid any confusion, this ISN’T an excerpt from Washington State’s 1996 football schedule - although it used to be:

Sept. 7 - at Temple

Sept. 14 - at Fresno State

Sept. 21 - open

Sept. 28 - at Minnesota

Oct. 5 - at Arizona

Oct. 12 - at Oregon State.

Notice anything?

Yeah, well, Rick Dickson noticed, too. Moreover, he knew that if you knew there wasn’t a home game until Oct. 19, the odds of him getting your season-ticket money were roughly that of Colfax unplugging the stoplights and the State Patrol taking a powder on a Cougar football Saturday.

But with a little cajoling, a lot of arm-twisting, the power of television and a willingness to start the season in the middle of harvest, WSU’s athletic director jury-rigged an alternative schedule he could sell to the masses - something with a couple of home games in September, at least.

And now he gets to do it all over again.

Yup. The 1997 schedule Dickson inherited also lacks a home game in the first six weeks of the season.

Oh, the skeletons buried in Bohler Gym.

Football schedules, of course, evolve as much as they are simply made - and are subject to the whims of TV, coaching changes and other natural disasters (see “Idaho, University of”).

Wazzu’s schedule had evolved into a straitjacket.

“Here we’ve just finished two seasons in a row where we’ve averaged 30,000 fans a game,” said Dickson. “Now, you don’t play at home until the 18th of October, then you’d better roll snake eyes and go 6-0 or you’re not going to sell a ticket.”

And playing nothing but road games isn’t giving your guys much of a chance to win. Dickson wanted to give Mike Price and the Cougs that chance.

So now they open at Colorado.

Nine-and-two, seventh-ranked, Cotton Bowl-bound, golden boy-coach Colorado.

Price is a big-picture type - enough that he was happy to announce the schedule to recruits last week.

“I guess I’ve come a long way with you,” Dickson told him, “because, in essence, I’ve traded Fresno for Colorado and you’re tickled to death.”

By buddying up with the Buffs on Aug. 31, Dickson was able to entice ABC into a TV commitment which, well, let him tell it.

“On Aug. 31, there’s not a lot of inventory out there for television,” Dickson explained. “So they were receptive - and it got to the point the last 10 days or so that they were wanting to close that, so they were willing to do an additional guarantee to get it done.”

With that second TV guarantee, Wazzu went hat-in-hand to the Pac-10, looking for some relief. The Pac-10 approached Oregon, which bumped a game with Nevada, and - shazam - the Cougars’ Nov. 2 home game with the Ducks was magically moved ahead to Sept. 21. Dickson then added a home date with San Jose State the following week.

The Minnesota game was zitzed by mutual agreement. Getting out of a home-and-away with Fresno, however, cost $40,000 - a necessary evil but “something I don’t like doing because I’ve been on the other end,” said Dickson.

The sidebar to salvaging the ‘96 schedule is where Dickson aims to take the Cougs thereafter. Colorado will return in 2001. An away-and-home series with Illinois begins in ‘97 - the first Big Ten team to agree to come to Pullman since Michigan State in 1947.

“The days of the one-way contracts,” Dickson said, “are over.”

Bold talk. Dickson thinks he can back it up.

“You tie it right back to the level of support,” he said, “and people prior to me were not in a position to do it - to accept the financial risk. We’ve minimized that risk of a $200,000 or $250,000 swap for home games. We can make the finances work on our end.”

Six sellouts the past two years tell him that. They also tell him that the expansion of Martin Stadium wouldn’t necessarily be a fool’s errand.

“We’re in the process of contracting an architect. We’d like to have plans in hand this spring. The whole message we’ve been trying to sell here is, ‘Participate in Cougar athletics.’

“If we can sell out three or four games next year, that would be more sellouts in three years than this school had in a decade. That would lend credence to the argument that we need more seats - particularly if we can get Big Ten and Big 12 opponents in here.”

In the meantime, he has another schedule to fix. And on Tuesday, Pacific - where the Cougs were supposed to play Oct. 11, 1997 - dropped football.

Sounds like the start of another evolution.

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

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