New coach: A little Bennett, a little Doba

PULLMAN – It has been 40 years since Washington State fired a football coach, so the overload of angst surrounding this divorce was no surprise.

So much so that athletic director Jim Sterk wouldn’t call it a firing Monday, just as Bill Doba wouldn’t call it a resignation. With the participation of Elson Floyd, who became school president in July, they mutually agreed to call it a “mutually-agreed-upon transition” – which if nothing else puts Wazzu on the cutting edge of human-resources-speak, collegiate style.

Not a villain or martyr to be found, at least until the football program’s 22-year-old quarterback had his say.

“The things I’ve seen in my time here behind the scenes with coach Doba validates more than anything his right to be the coach of this football team,” said Alex Brink, standing taller in the pocket than he ever has. “Which is unfortunate that the decision was made by somebody who’s only been here for a few months.”

Wow. A sack by the quarterback.

Brink’s broadside on the president was intemperate and impulsive, to say nothing of incorrect. But it was also a little heroic, and what it did reflect was a depth of feeling for Doba that is, well, mutually agreed upon throughout Pullman and the far-flung Washington State community – along with the very human instinct to affix the blame somewhere.

This change was a sad, but amicable, inevitability.

Doba himself maintained the end of 19 years here was “a happy time.

“It’s like going to a Polish funeral,” he joked. “You celebrate life. Now, if we were at a real Polish funeral, there would be some booze here.”

Surely it did not have the grim aura that accompanied the 1967 axing of Bert Clark, who was let go for pretty much the same reason: not enough talent in the program and no prospects for sunnier days.

That was the year Clark was famously quoted as admitting that Wazzu’s “biggest problem is not having one outstanding offensive ballplayer” and that “as it looks now, we shouldn’t even be playing in this conference.”

Doba would never say that – he’s frank, but never brutally frank – and it doesn’t apply to the 2007 Cougars, anyway.

But his explanation of the circumstances was that he couldn’t recruit with all the public sniping, the uncertainty of his future and his age – 67. He suggested after Saturday’s Apple Cup victory that only some endorsement or extension would soften that. What didn’t get said is that the Cougars under Doba didn’t recruit – or retain – well enough even with that backing to avoid being at this crossroads.

At some point, past performance has to become an overriding predictor of future results.

“We had a discussion,” Doba said. “But you have to be realistic, too.”

Perhaps the real revelations of Monday’s announcement were that Doba had been asked – and agreed – to serve on the advisory committee to find his replacement, and that former Oregon athletic director Bill Moos, himself a Coug, will help Sterk as a headhunter.

By Monday evening, Moos had been in contact with nearly a dozen potential candidates.

“I honestly feel this is a prime opportunity to seize the moment and get a jump on the Huskies,” Moos said. “Both programs are down. At Oregon, when we went after the Huskies, they were winning and it was a major challenge. This is maybe a time to step in with the right person who has charisma and energy, both for recruiting and to help get the stadium finished.”

This is, Moos insisted, Sterk’s process and decision.

“But I’ve had first-hand experience – from Jim Sweeney to Jackie Sherrill to Warren Powers to Jim Walden to Mike Price,” said Moos, who after his playing days, rose to become assistant athletic director at WSU. “I think I’ve got a pretty good feel for those who might want to be one-year wonders or someone who has an interest in the place, can adapt to it or has been there before and won’t look down his nose at Pullman or eastern Washington. Because he’s got to make a good, solid sell to recruits and fans.”

This is a delicate matter. For as much as someone with that Cougars sense of place is valued, there have been coaching regimes in many sports here – led both by those reared Cougars and those who drank the Kool-Aid – that have fallen into a funk about what can’t get done due to the limitations of location and resources. Likewise, the basketball program – now ranked sixth in the country – is proof that a Palouse outsider can succeed fabulously, too.

In any case, the challenge can’t become a drag. Doba tiptoed that thin line, too.

“If I was going to hurt this university or this program in any way,” he said, “it was time for me to get the heck out of here.”

And as an advisor to the screening committee, what would be his suggestion?

“They need another Tony Bennett,” he said, invoking the basketball example. “How’s that?”

That’s good. But you also need a Bill Doba once in a while, too.

On that, everyone should be mutually agreed.