Leaf Challenged Program, Fans To Reach For Top

Oh, they’ll never forget that it was Ryan Leaf who took them to the Rose Bowl.

They’ll never forget the Apple Cup, the pass that beat USC, the five touchdowns against Cal, the impossible throws, the physical feats, the Heisman pose after the Stanford game and the bulk mailing of leaves on his behalf.

They’ll never forget the trophy and the rings they would not own without him.

But memory is a funny thing.

So when Washington State quarterback Ryan Leaf announced Friday that he’d cast his lot - if not his love - with the National Football League rather than return for a senior season, what came to mind for Cougars coach Mike Price was something funny: Leaf walking into Husky Stadium for his first collegiate start.

“In front of 75,000, he runs out and starts going like this,” recalled Price, flapping his arms in an imitation of Leaf inciting the hostiles. “A freshman. His first start. I thought, ‘Oh, man, he’s got some guts.”’

Cougar athletic director Rick Dickson went back a year earlier for his Leafian Moment, when the 18-year-old redshirt was quarterbacking the scout team in practice against the best defense in Cougars history.

“It was the Chad Eaton-Mark Fields-Torey Hunter group,” laughed Dickson, “and the week before the Apple Cup he’s out there calling signals: ‘Blue 27, blue 27, Eaton sucks!’

“That’s the kind of competitiveness he has, the brashness. And he was taking it out on the best defense in the country. It was almost like he was saying, ‘C’mon, America, let me see what you’ve got.”

The point is, achievement validated Ryan Leaf, but it didn’t define him.

He did that himself.

In the process, he shook up the whole notion of what Cougar football was about, its place in a region’s hearts and perhaps even its cockeyed relationship with Montlake Tech and other bullies.

Depends. Do you suppose Mike Price can venture into some living room and lure out another one?

Price himself buys into the notion that every Leaf, every Drew Bledsoe he turns into a first-round pick and a first-rate guy makes it easier to find the next one.

And no question - there will be more terrific quarterbacks at Wazzu.

But Price may never turn over a new Leaf.

His defensive assistants told him so when Leaf was on the scout team - “that he’s got the charisma, the leadership, the toughness,” Price said. “And he’s made as big an impact as any player we’ve had here.”

Bigger.

Jack Thompson infused the hapless with hope. Timm Rosenbach and Drew Bledsoe - both of whom skipped their senior years, as well - got the Cougars back in the bowl loop.

But this last step loomed like Everest - to everyone except Leaf himself and perhaps Price, the true believer.

“I knew Ryan would do well because he’s always been so competitive,” offered his father, John. “But I didn’t really think it would come this far. Maybe if he’d gone to Miami, or a school like that, which was always there at that level. But at Washington State, you’re talking 67 years since the last Rose Bowl. You’re just not expecting to go. But he had that dream.”

Moreover, he had the gifts, drive and attitude to simply will the Cougars there.

“Guys like myself and Mike, we throw words out there and maybe they ring hollow,” said Dickson. “We say you can dream big and shoot for the stars and no matter what history or people tell you, you can achieve.

“But it takes a young man like Ryan to actually make it happen. There’s a lot of guys on board fighting, too, but without Ryan it doesn’t happen.”

What did Wazzu give back?

Unconditional love.

Perhaps Cougars fans saw him as their deliverance from the cranky and common Chad Davis, but Leaf was a populist success in a way Bledsoe - or any quarterback since Thompson, really - never quite managed. The cheeky manner that put off the stoics back home in Montana (“too many people have just seen a snapshot of him,” reasoned Dickson) played a lot better on campus.

“You’ve allowed me to grow up in my own way,” he said. “Being your own person and not allowing anyone to tell you different can still make you a success.”

Most accepting of all was Price, who cajoled Leaf through a bout of transfer-itis and sanded the roughest edges but left the necessary ones. It seemed like the oddest match -“though we’re really more alike than you think,” the coach insisted.

For Price believes he can always come up with the call to pull out a cliffhanger, and rues the final seconds he felt were taken from the Cougs in Thursday’s Rose Bowl loss. Likewise, Leaf believes he can come up with the winning play - within reason.

“It’s hard to go 93 yards in 29 seconds with no timeouts,” he admitted. “I don’t know if Joe Montana could have done that.”

But there wasn’t a Coug who would have swapped the two Thursday night.

“You get the same satisfaction watching a kid like Lee Harrison, but it’s a different kind of journey,” Dickson said of the Cougars’ senior center, a one-time walk-on who plodded through four years of obscurity and emerged as a vital character this year.

“He comes with you. A Ryan Leaf takes you by the collar and drags you with him, wherever he can. It’s the same satisfaction, but a different evolution.”

Now we’ll watch the evolution on Sundays.

“I don’t want to leave college football,” said Leaf, a motion seconded by his parents, “but I just think it’s time for me to do the next best thing.”

Ryan Leaf wasn’t the first Cougar to play with a swagger. But in doing so he left footprints, and they won’t soon fade.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)

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