Road work ahead
PULLMAN – The scenario is a familiar one.
A Washington State University football team beset with question marks opens the season in the Midwest. On the other side of the ball is a college football power, a top-20 team with a history of success. After a rough start, the Cougars find their legs.
When it’s over, WSU has pulled the upset. Cougars fans, few of whom made the trip, are ecstatic. The win serves as a springboard for success.
No, we’re not looking ahead. We’re looking back, all the way back to 1977, Warren Powers’ lone season as WSU coach. The Cougars opened what would become a 7-4 year with a 19-10 win before 75,922 in Lincoln, Neb., handing the 15th-ranked Cornhuskers a shocking defeat.
It’s a result the 2007 Cougars are hoping to repeat. They’ll get their chance Saturday, when they travel to Madison, Wis., to face the seventh-ranked Badgers, one of the Big Ten Conference favorites. It’s the seventh time in the past 30 years WSU has opened on the road against a national power.
Why do the Cougars do it? Why do they play teams the caliber of Wisconsin or last year’s fourth-ranked Auburn team to open the season?
Because they can. Or more precisely, because they want to.
“We are in the Pac-10,” head coach Bill Doba said, meaning the Cougars are members of one of the elite football conferences in the nation, so no non-conference foe should be intimidating.
The Cougars have played at least one non-conference Bowl Championship Series power in 22 of the past 30 years. Most of those have been on the road, and most times the opponent has been ranked.
Contrast that to the recent scheduling history of this year’s opening opponent, Wisconsin. The last time the Badgers played a ranked non-conference opponent in the regular season was in 2001, when they lost to Oregon (ranked seventh) and Fresno State (19th). Since then, such powers as Bowling Green, Temple, Western and Northern Illinois, Buffalo, North Carolina and Akron have dotted the non-conference schedule.
“I’ve always wanted to play at least one tough opponent – now I don’t want to go to Michigan every year, or Ohio State or that kind of thing – one Big Ten or SEC or ACC opponent every year,” Doba said. “You would like to play one of those when they’re down, not when they are ranked seventh in the nation.”
WSU athletic director Jim Sterk said the idea is one of balance, with the hope of having one game in which the Cougars will be the underdogs and two in which they will be favored. Such is the case this season, with San Diego State and Idaho following Saturday’s opener.
The reasons behind the strategy are simple.
“With only three non-conference games to schedule most years, one needs to be a chance to post a hang-your-hat-on upset. If you are going to play someone tough, and WSU will, then play them early.
“If you are going to make headlines, if you’re going to upset somebody that you are not supposed to beat,” Doba said, “then probably the easiest and the best time to play them is probably the first game of the season.
“It doesn’t always work out that way, sometimes it will be the second or third game. But early in the season, usually we’re still fresh, while teams of that caliber usually have more depth than we do. We should be pretty much at full strength.”
Plus, Doba loves to point out, a tough opener makes the players focus throughout the spring and summer – a dread of a season-opening lopsided loss can make college kids lift harder and run more – as well as giving practices throughout fall camp much more intensity.
“The road beckons because money talks. Washington State isn’t one of the BCS haves. The Cougars use the guaranteed money such a trip brings to help fund the athletic department.
Such was the case last season, when the Cougars reportedly returned from Auburn with nearly $1 million for the athletic department coffers.
Saturday’s game, on ABC, will carry a hefty guarantee. But that’s not the overriding factor for non-conference scheduling, according to Sterk. He is adamant budget considerations don’t fuel the schedule and never have.
As proof, it was Sterk, the guy in charge of the budget, who had to be talked into playing the Tigers.
“I didn’t want the Auburn game,” he said, noting he turned the game down three times. “I was worried because it was the first year we were playing all nine Pac-10 schools and we had enough on our plate. I felt we needed to schedule somebody we were going to be favored to win as opposed to going down to the SEC, to a place where it’s rare you can win.
“Bill felt we had a veteran team, he wanted that, he likes to have that challenge. For me, I kick myself that I let them talk me into it.”
Sterk laughed after the last comment, because he knows Doba would rather face Auburn than a directional school for a multitude of reasons.
“I wanted to play a good team and it was either Auburn or a I-AA school somewhere, so I thought, ‘Let’s jump in the fire, let’s see what we have,’ ” Doba said of the 40-14 defeat on a steamy night in Alabama. “I still think we came out a better ballclub.
“Maybe (a win over an easier opponent would have given WSU a bowl berth), but we might not have won the second game or a late one because we weren’t ready.”
“Pullman isn’t a destination attraction for college football’s elite and even a new golf course isn’t going to change that.
“They basically have said no,” Sterk said about bringing any BCS powers to Pullman. So the Cougars travel for big non-conference games.
In some future years, that travel will only be as far as Seattle’s Qwest Field – next season the Cougs will open there against Oklahoma State and they’ll play Minnesota in 2011 and Wisconsin in 2014 – but Auburn was a made-for-ESPN game without a return guarantee, games Sterk doesn’t want on the schedule if he can help it.
Wisconsin not only filled a hole in WSU’s schedule – the Cougars were slated to play at San Jose State until the Spartans pulled out – but also led to a home-and-home series in the next decade.
Speaking of the future, in 2008 the Pac-10 will be tied into seven bowls, which means a bowl bid may be in the offing no matter how pathetic the non-conference schedule may be. In fact, the weaker the opposition, the easier it will be to earn the minimum of six wins needed for a chance at a bowl.
Besides Oklahoma State next year, the Cougars will play at Baylor and Hawaii and host Big Sky Conference member Portland State. With 13 games – Hawaii doesn’t count against the 12-game limit – WSU will have to win seven to qualify for postseason.
But six, seven, whatever, Doba wants to play a decent non-conference schedule.
“Bowl games should be for special teams and teams that are ranked, and I know they are a lot of fun and the alums rate your record or your excellence or whatever you want to say by how many bowl games you go to,” he said. “That’s our goal, we want to go to a bowl game. They’re a lot of fun for the kids, but I guess the alums grade you on how successful you are or not by how many bowl games you go to.”
Doba summed up why he likes the tough non-conference games, like Auburn or Saturday’s against Wisconsin.
“This is supposed to be a college experience,” he said. “I know it’s all about winning and everything else, but it’s also good for the individual kids to experience something like that.”