John Blanchette: Don’t let Cougars pay the Price

Full disclosure: Mike Price and I don’t exchange Christmas cards.

When he coached football at Washington State, I was among the few – in the media, anyway – who didn’t like his style, to invoke a convenient catch-all. And he was one of many Cougars who certainly had their reasons not to like mine.

We didn’t connect, but that’s OK. Our jobs are such that we’re not supposed to, not really.

So feel free to take that into account in whatever measure when I say that bringing Mike Price back to run the football program again at Wazzu is a mistake.

Naturally, to many Cougars Price seems like an obvious tonic for an ailing football program – and it didn’t take Bill Doba’s leave-taking from the program on Monday to get the buzz going. It began a year ago, when the faceless, nameless chorus took a voice vote and decided Doba’s 2007 Cougars needed to go to a bowl game, or else.

The funniest variation had Price becoming head coach and Doba agreeing to serve again as defensive coordinator, as he did for nine years before his big break. Because, you know, orchestra conductors who get fired always want to hang around to play second violin.

The Internet traffics in almost everything, except dignity.

And speaking of dignity, it was certainly thoughtful of WSU athletic director Jim Sterk to acknowledge to a Seattle newspaper that Price “would be somebody on a list of coaches that I would obviously consider but by no means is he the guy” – before the Apple Cup and thus purportedly before Doba’s fate had been decided. You’d think Sterk could have found something on which to scribble his shopping list besides the back of Doba’s pink slip.

In any case, Price’s candidacy – which he’s coyly done nothing to discourage – has long been out of the tube.

Let me try to squeeze it back in.

It’s not easy. Price achieved what no other WSU coach has – taking the Cougars to two Rose Bowls, the first ending an absence of 67 years. It was a spectacular achievement, impossible to devalue, and he’s owed the gratitude of every Cougar.

Yes, there was a perfect-storm quality to it, but opportunity was there. He didn’t kick it away.

At Washington State – or any career underdog with a narrow passage to greatness – that’s no small thing.

Even Price’s barely-.500 record at WSU isn’t all that damning, because that’s pretty much the kind of place Wazzu is. The record book doesn’t lie. Doba’s issue was that he started out 10-3 and never got close again in four years. Price had his desperate valleys – the post-1997 swale was an excessive purge, and earned him critics even the Rose Bowls couldn’t completely quiet. But his peaks were dizzying, always buying him time. Of course, Wazzu is famous for its patience in that regard, unlike most college football outposts.

So what’s the problem?

Well, his age. Come next football season, Price will be 62 – or the same age Bill Doba was when his first season as head coach began.

“If they’re beating up Doba (in recruiting) because of his age now,” said Jim Walden, one of Price’s predecessors and now the Cougars’ extremely colorful commentator on radio, “why wouldn’t they beat up Price for the same thing?”

There is the sketchy record of coaching do-overs in the Pac-10 – with Oregon State’s Mike Riley to the good, but USC’s John Robinson (12-11 in his last two years) and Bill Walsh (7-14-1 in his last two) to the very bad.

And then there’s what happened before the second Rose Bowl.

That’s when Alabama came calling and, after checking to see if Sterk might have some spare change for yet another raise, Price quite properly jumped at the opportunity to coach at one of the sport’s great estates. Well, not jump – he insisted on staying to coach the Rose Bowl. It was clumsy, selfish, messy – a divisive distraction that even president V. Lane Rawlins second-guessed it. The administration was just as culpable, but it’s Price who suffered the ire – and does to this day.

The strip-club shenanigans and his graceless fall at Alabama before coaching a game are mere footnotes to that awkwardness.

“I don’t think a coach that leaves a school when he’s got them in the Rose Bowl and goes to another place is what you want,” said Walden, as usual holding back not at all. “I’m not thinking that’s a serious move for a school.

“We didn’t divorce him. He left us. The Cougar in me says, ‘No.’ Maybe it’s emotional. Or maybe I have a deeper feel for the school that says we’ve got to get better.”

It’s noteworthy that Price’s return gained momentum with two quick bowl appearances at UTEP. But his last two teams have been losers – this year’s club dropped its last six. His Novembers are still bad news. And the Miners aren’t in the Pac-10.

“What is he doing for UTEP that we would get excited about?” Walden said. “Has he been to four bowls in four years? Won 50 games? What makes us think he’s a great prospect? I’m not trying to knock the guy, but let’s move on.”

On as in forward, not back. As Walden’s remarks suggest, there will be no honeymoon period for Mike Price at WSU. There is never going to be unanimity about this hire, but a fresh face will allow everyone in the Cougar constituency at least to drop their guards and rally around the coach without toting some heavy old baggage.

Put him in the Hall of Fame, sure. But not back on the sidelines.