Washington State’s run to the Rose Bowl inflamed old passions from all points on the map. It showed up in Mike Price’s mail, and in mine.

The most persistent correspondent to this address wrote almost weekly, identifying himself only as “A Subscriber.” That rather cowardly conceit aside - and we’ll chalk it up to the unfortunate influence of talk radio - his posts were invariably entertaining, teetering between the provocative and the preposterous.

Particularly troubling to him “as a taxpayer and WSU contributor,” he once wrote, was the contract being rewritten for - and on Friday signed by - Price.

It was a distinctly minority view.

Most everyone else who’d climbed aboard the starship that Price had boldly piloted to where only a handful of living Cougs had ever gone before felt it prudent, at the least, that the coach be lavishly rewarded and bound to the school in perpetuity.

A Subscriber demurred.

“Wasn’t it anticipated,” he wrote, “when the (previous) long-term contract was signed that he might someday have a good season?”

In other words, wasn’t taking the Cougars to the Rose Bowl exactly what Price was already being paid - just not as handsomely - to do?

It’s this type of thinking - hard-boiled, incisive, pragmatic - that has absolutely no application today in sports, be it the professional kind or its thinly disguised college cousin.

The same goes for A Subscriber’s follow-up question: “Was his contract ever renegotiated downward after poor seasons?”

It’s always curious how sports fans lust to construct parameters - however logical - for the athletic world that aren’t in force in their own.

For unless A Subscriber is a salesman working solely on commission, it’s unlikely his own income is tied so strictly to achievement the way he expects Price’s to be.

Or maybe he’s an artist or a waiter - but then, a down year might be the product of the fickle winds of popular taste or a run of bad tippers.

Mike Price will make at least $469,000 this next school year and for seven years thereafter - extraordinary money for a coach in these parts and a mere 85 percent raise. It’s a jarring figure just to read, whether you’re, uh, a Joe off the street seeing it in the paper or Price seeing it on his W-2 form.

Those of you who find the figure distressing in its excess, well, we’ll assume you own one of the dozen TVs in town that were tuned to PBS and not ABC on New Year’s Day.

Yes, Price will now make more than twice what his president, Sam Smith, earns each year - though it should be noted that Price’s base salary of $144,000 is a symbolic $1,000 less than Smith’s.

So coffee at the CUB is still on Sam.

But what’s the alternative? At Eastern Washington University, coach Mike Kramer just took the Eagles to within a victory of playing for the national championship. Yet not only does the school president make substantially more money, he’s being given a platinum parachute for presiding over a death spiral that has the legislature itching to turn the joint into a junior college.

Whatever beefs the Cougar community has with athletic director Rick Dickson - and you hear a few, from his hires to Rose Bowl ticket allocation to his eagerness to move a football game to the Kingdome - one true strength can’t be denied. Not only has he recognized the changing fiscal demands of being a player in the Pac-10, he has cajoled WSU to ante up.

The good news is, this time Dickson was able to reward not just potential but performance - and loyalty. Price isn’t the only coach who could succeed in Pullman, but he’s the one who has - and has stayed to succeed again and again.

It never seemed Mike Price was going to end up at any of the schools that may have sniffed around the past few years for no other reason than this: the one compelling program for him to coach is Washington State.

It is, simply, his cause.

Of course, a good money-whipping or a severe lack of appreciation can make a cause seem trivial, but that hardly seems likely now.

“This certainly isn’t the time to leave,” he said Friday. “This is the time to stay when finally we’re getting some of the things we’ve yearned for so many years.

“You’d have to be nuts to want to leave now, especially if you like living in Pullman, which I do.”

True, the grumbling from A Subscriber and his pals will be louder now anytime the Cougs fall below .500 - as if a football program should come with a money-back guarantee. The fact is, Dickson has made clear his concern with issues beyond the record by offering an eight-year contract to a man who has never had back-to-back winning seasons.

But while we’re on the subject …

If Price stays for all eight years and wins games at roughly the same rate he has for his first nine - six a season - he’ll have 101. Or seven more than the winningest football coach in Cougars history, Babe Hollingbery - one of those guys they used to name buildings after.

Of course, by then WSU will probably be selling off the names of buildings to corporations.

In order to pay coaches’ salaries.

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

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