Patience pays

So you’re at a burger joint and they’re just slammed. Orders are piling up. They’re calling out the numbers – “52, 53, 55, 56 …” – and you’re holding No. 54.

People who came 10 minutes after you are walking off with their double cheese and fries. The guy who was in line right behind you has inhaled his gut bomb and is gone. You ask about your order. The counter jockey wrinkles her nose.

Please wait until your number is called.

Another lesson. Fast food isn’t fair.

Well, neither is college football, necessarily.

Now, Jeremy Bohannon doesn’t look at it that way. He is no victim, no dupe. There were, he saw from his first day at Washington State University, dues to be paid, and he paid them.

Boy, did he pay them.

On Friday night, a Cougar streak of both dubious and obvious merit will come to an end. After 38 appearances in a WSU uniform as a handyman of almost absurd versatility – he’s played on punt teams, kickoff teams, as a strong safety, punt return teams, kickoff return teams, as a nickel back, a dime back – Bohannon will get his first college start in the season opener at New Mexico.

Thirty-eight games. Every game the Cougars have played since the start of the 2001 season. He’s finished games, rescued games, turned games around.

He’s just never started.

Technically, of course, that’s not true. Since each game starts with a kickoff and Bohannon is a regular on both the kickoff and kick-return units, he’s inevitably on the field. But the starters are the guys who trot out for the first scrimmage plays, and he’s never been one of those.

No Coug has ever been such a perpetual apprentice – and, it stands to reason, none has ever anticipated his first start more.

“It’s been a long road,” admitted Bohannon, a senior from Richland. “I’ve been playing behind some of the better athletes who’ve ever come out of Washington State and it was an honor to play behind them.

“It’s never been something that’s weighed on me, but just the same, I can’t wait for (Friday) night.”

Of course, better to have played in those 38 games than to have not played at all. It makes panic beside the point.

On Planet Coug, the inhabitants can get a little snarky these days. As the predictions from rags, mags and assorted gasbags roll in and the Cougars are slotted a spot well into the second division, that old unappreciated feeling has again taken root. It is one thing, the seers seem to be saying, to string together three consecutive 10-win seasons – just like an actual Big Time Program – but it is another to weather the wholesale losses of graduation and hope to keep the pace with last year’s subs.

And, true enough, the Cougar defense has only two starters returning – linebacker Will Derting and cornerback Karl Paymah.

Yet in another respect, this is far from the greenest defense the Cougars have fielded. Friday’s starters, presuming cast in casts – Derting and safety Hamza Abdullah – appear as expected, will have 259 games of WSU experience, and not just as special teamers. Defensive tackle Steve Cook’s run of 34 games without a start is second only to Bohannon. Abdullah (28) and defensive end Adam Braidwood (26) are also on that list.

“We have a lot of guys,” noted Derting, “who could have started last year. They were ready. They were just behind more experienced people.”

Which has always been the case for Bohannon.

If people expected more from him sooner, it’s only because he was good enough to make it to the field in 2001 without the benefit of a redshirt season. But two pretty good players, Lamont Thompson and Billy Newman, were entrenched as WSU’s safeties. The next year, Erik Coleman and Virgil Williams stepped into those spots. So that’s the Pacific-10 Conference’s all-time interception leader, two pros – Coleman is expected to start the season opener for the New York Jets as a rookie – and two who lasted fairly deep into NFL training camps before being cut.

“I knew I wasn’t going to take Lamont and Billy out,” said Bohannon, “and Erik had started the year before when Lamont went down. I knew what was ahead of me and that it was going to take a lot of hard work, and I was able to take the back seat knowing I’d given it my all and I just had great players in front of me.”

And it didn’t hurt that he was getting some playing time, too – and making some things happen.

As both a special teamer and a nickel back, Bohannon has demonstrated a knack for being around the football. He’s recovered two blocked punts for touchdowns in his career – one in the rout of Oregon last fall, when he also had one of WSU’s seven interceptions. He blocked a punt as a freshman against Stanford. Last year against UCLA, he scooped up a fumble and returned it 72 yards to set up a game-turning score.

“It’s about making the most of your chances,” said Bohannon. “I tried to practice hard, knowing it would carry over into games. And when I got into games, every single play – even though it might only be one play every six or seven or 10 – I knew I had to make something happen. So I played with the confidence that I was going to be the one who was going to make something happen.”

He carried with him the feeling that he was in the right place at the right time – even when he was standing on the sideline.

“I knew this was the place I wanted to be,” he said. “I’m from eastern Washington and I’ve watched the Cougars since I was a little kid. When I was playing Grid Kids football as a little kid, I was a Cougar. Right then I kind of knew what I wanted to be. I didn’t even take any trips anyplace else. I could have made my visit during a tornado and I would have come here.

“Even if I was fifth string, this was the place I wanted to be. And to be here during the best run in the history of the school just reinforces that.”

And now they’ve called his number. Jeremy Bohannon’s dues have been paid, in full.