WSU Bandwagon Full Cougar Football Team Is Quickly Becoming The Darling Of The Pacific-10 Title Chase

By opening the season with victories over UCLA and USC, the Washington State University football team moved into the Top 25 and strongly established itself in the Pacific-10 Conference race.

As this week’s game with Illinois approaches, coach Mike Price and the 19th-ranked Cougars continue to be showered with accolades. Tuesday’s biweekly conference call of Pac-10 coaches turned into an all-out Crimson-and-Gray lovefest.

“First of all,” Arizona State’s Bruce Snyder began, “I really like Mike. He’s a terrific coach.”

Whoa, save that one for the media guide. More from Bruce later. Arizona’s Dick Tomey is on the line.

“I’ve had enormous respect for Washington State every year that Coach Price has been there,” Tomey gushed. “Some years have been up and some years have been down, just like the rest of us in the league, but I just believe they play hard.”

John Robinson would know. By the fourth quarter Saturday, his offensive line was sputtering on the stagnant fumes of a fading tradition.

“To me, Washington State has always been a really competitive team, and when we’ve played them, it’s always been close,” said Robinson, perhaps recalling last year’s five-point victory in Pullman. “I’ve always looked at it as kind of even games. We’ve won them up to this point and lost this one.

“I don’t see it as such an unusual phenomena.”

Unusual phenomena? Is that Washington’s Jim Lambright singing the Cougar fight song?

“I’m cheering like mad for Mike Price and for the Cougs,” Lambright said. “I couldn’t have been more proud of that (sweeping the L.A. schools) and I’m so appreciative of getting a monkey off your back like they had with USC down there.”

Stanford’s Tyrone Willingham, not the sort to get caught up in the moment, joined Oregon’s Mike Bellotti in offering a more conservative evaluation.

“They’ve got a tremendous start,” Willingham allowed, “but the one thing that I think will come to many minds today is that the overall play of our conference is very good and very strong. So there’s some hurdles still down the road.”

Added Bellotti, whose 1996 team lost five straight to ruin a 3-0 start: “Obviously, it’s early in the season and it really is not how you start, it’s how you finish. And we have really lived that the last couple years. We all have to focus on November.”

He said it. But even if the Cougars haven’t been known for their convincing finishes, none of the Pac-10 coaches seemed surprised by their fast start.

“We have not played them the last two years, so I don’t know them very well… . I do know about Ryan Leaf,” ASU’s Snyder said. “I watched the UCLA game and, boy, he’s a terrific player. And Mike Black is one of the better runners. So I’m not surprised.”

UCLA’s Bob Toledo, having endured a heartbreaking 37-34 loss in Pullman two weeks ago, was even more specific.

“Offensively, they had a pretty good line, they had some outstanding receivers, they had a real good running back, and one of the best quarterbacks in the country,” Toledo touted. “And defensively, Mike Price has said that his team was as big as it’s been and probably as fast as it’s ever been.

“So we knew they were a good football team. I think some other people are finding out.”

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