Turning Back The Clock Erickson, Wulff Reunite As Opposing Coaches

After more than 30 years as a head football coach at nearly every level imaginable, Dennis Erickson is facing yet another first.

When the second-year Oregon State coach leads his Beavers into Reser Stadium in Corvallis, Ore., on Saturday, he will be matching wits - and game plans - against a former player for the first time in his career.

“It’s something I’m really looking forward to,” the 53-year-old Erickson said of OSU’s season-opening matchup against Division I-AA Eastern Washington and its first-year head coach, Paul Wulff.

Wulff, 33, played for Erickson at Washington State in 1987 and 1988. He started at center both years and played a key role in a 9-3 breakthrough season in 1988 that landed the Cougars in the Aloha Bowl and Erickson in Miami, where he led the Hurricanes to national championships in 1989 and 1991.

As he looks back on his brief stay at WSU, Erickson admits he saw coaching potential in Wulff, who was the brains of a stellar offensive line that included All-American Mike Utley and current OSU assistant Jim Michalczik.

“That’s the best offensive line I’ve had in all my years of coaching,” Erickson recalled. “Paul was real smart and understood the game real well, which is why we put him at center.

“I tell Michalczik all the time that if it wasn’t for Wulff making the (blocking) calls, he and Utley wouldn’t have known what in the hell was going to happen.”

Wulff, who played for three different coaches during his five years at Wazzu, remembers Erickson as the one who brought the most consistent approach and greatest amount of energy to practices and games. And he admits he has tried to copy those attributes during the infant stages of his own coaching career.

“He was able to get his players to believe in his system and play hard all the time,” said Wulff, “and I think that comes from his consistency and his competitive fire.

“If you look at his track record, he’s won a lot of football games, and he’s done it at more than one place.”

Erickson will enter Saturday’s game with 120 collegiate wins, including the seven he posted last fall in leading OSU to its first winning season in 29 years. He also won 31 games during his four seasons as coach of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks - which makes Wulff at least a 151-win underdog to his former mentor.

So is he ready for the showdown?

“Maybe if I was a little more seasoned in my coaching career,” Wulff said through an amused grin. “Really, I don’t know if you’re ever ready to go against someone like (Erickson), but at the same time, it should be fun.”

The Erickson-Wulff connection won’t be the only one adding to the intrigue of Saturday’s game.

Wulff has remained close to Michalczik and was in his former teammate’s wedding. Gregg Smith, Wulff’s former position coach at WSU, still works for Erickson as OSU’s assistant head coach and offensive line coach. And two more of Erickson’s assistants - offensive coordinator Tim Lappano and defensive coordinator Craig Bray - were with him at WSU.

In addition, Wulff has lured former Cougar teammate Timm Rosenbach - the starting quarterback under Erickson during both of his years at WSU - onto his Eastern staff as a volunteer assistant.

Because of his former association with Wulff and Rosenbach, Erickson said he has a good idea of what to expect from the Eagles when they take the field as massive underdogs.

“Knowing those two guys and how competitive they are, we know what kind of team they’ll bring in here,” Erickson said. “They were both tough son-of-a-guns, and your teams usually tend to play very much like you did when you were a player.”

Quick kicks

A crowd of more than 30,000 is expected for Saturday’s game, which kicks off at 3:30 p.m in 35,362-seat Reser Stadium… . OSU has sold 15,000 season tickets this year, almost double the amount of the previous high… . The EWU Alumni Association will host a pregame reception that starts at 1:30 p.m. in the Prothro Field tent area outside Reser Stadium… . Eastern had not played a current member of the Pacific-10 Conference since 1908, when it lost to Washington State 73-0… . This will be the first meeting between the schools, but OSU coach Dennis Erickson was 2-2 against EWU when he was at Idaho.