WSU’s Sterk stays the course

PULLMAN – Bill Doba hears the clamor over his team’s 0-4 Pac-10 start, but Washington State’s football coach isn’t worried about his future. Only the team’s.

The reason is simple. The decision isn’t his. It’s in the hands of athletic director Jim Sterk, and Sterk isn’t in any mood to make a change in the middle of a season.

“Now is not the time to make a decision for something like that,” Sterk said in a recent interview. “I’ve always (felt) you sit down at the end of the season and see where we are. There’s a lot of football to be played yet.”

How that football plays out is what matters.

“We’ve been through the toughest part,” of the schedule Sterk said, noting this year’s schedule is almost a flip of last season’s. “We have more home games than away games coming up. Who’s to say whether we are going to win or lose each of those … they are winnable games over the next five.

“So how the team responds, how they play, who knows, but I expect them to be competitive and to come roaring back after this break.”

In a wide-ranging interview in his office, Sterk admitted players, staff and fans are disappointed by the lack of wins this season. But he also said he’s happy with the job Doba and his staff is doing.

“He wouldn’t be the head coach if I didn’t have great confidence in him,” Sterk said.

But Sterk said an evaluation of the program will occur at the end of the season, as it does every year. He will take many factors into account, including financial considerations, performance on and off the field and the state of recruiting.

For his part, Doba, 67 and in his 19th year in Pullman, isn’t worried.

“I’m getting great support (overall), and great support from Jim Sterk,” Doba said.

But Sterk won’t give Doba a public vote of confidence.

“That’s why I’m not going to make a statement like that, because those can be the death knell,” Sterk said with a laugh. “I’ve seen it too many times.”

But he did follow the joking comment with a story.

“I was just at Pac-10 meetings, and (USC athletic director) Mike Garrett, who can be pretty critical of things, he said he loves Bill Doba,” Sterk said. “(Doba) gets the most out of his kids that he’s ever seen with any coach. And Mike knows football. He thinks we have a great staff. He just hates to come up here and play because he knows they may have the superior talent, but our coaching staff will prepare (our players) pretty well and they know how to coach.

“People in the business, football coaches, A.D.s, they know we have a pretty good staff.”

The won-loss record – WSU is 2-5 this season, 0-4 in the Pac-10 and 27-27 overall in Doba’s head-coaching tenure – can’t be pinned entirely on the coaches’ door, according to Sterk.

When asked about the three 10-win seasons earlier this decade, Sterk pointed out they followed an upgrade of the weight room and other facilities.

But those facilities, which WSU uses to entice football recruits, have been eclipsed since by Oregon and most of the Pac-10 schools.

“At that time our weight room was probably one of the top five in the country,” Doba said of the end of the Mike Price era. “I know Jason Gesser for one, because I walked him in there, he walked in and said, ‘Man, I’ve got to lift weights here.’ That sold him and sold several kids.

“Now that weight room is probably one of the top five in the Pac-10.”

“We are David and Goliath in a lot of respects, and sometimes I don’t mind that,” Sterk said. “But it can’t be too much of a disparity so it’s not a level playing field.”

The field isn’t level right now.

“We should have made hay (with the stadium) after the first Rose Bowl year (the 1997 season),” Doba said.

Sterk agrees, noting the football stadium upgrade was first planned 16 years ago and is just coming to fruition.

Others pointed to Oregon State as an example of a school that struck while the team was hot, starting a fund-raising drive after a Fiesta Bowl win that has resulted in a new-look Reser Stadium.

“We can’t sit still, because if you are sitting still, you are going backwards,” Sterk said of the facilities. “But I think the coaches would tell you too, ‘Yeah, we took some risks on kids and maybe made some mistakes that way, too.’ So I think it’s two-way. It’s not that they’re exempt from the players they recruited, who they got here, but (the facilities) play a role in that.

“That’s why we are investing in the stadium and making it better. That’s a role I can play as an athletic director.”

“Our facilities are very adequate,” Doba said. “They are good enough to win, they are good enough to train kids, they are good enough for everything. But they aren’t flashy, they aren’t new.”

That can make the difference in a recruiting battle, according to Doba and Sterk. So can the Internet and talk-radio chatter calling for a coaching change.

Doba has talked before and reiterated this week, such comments make recruits want to wait before committing, to see what the future will bring.

Sterk also admitted money plays a factor in every decision about coaches.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t,” Sterk said.

It would cost WSU around $2.8 million to make a change at the end of the season, according to staff contracts examined for this story.

The nine WSU assistant position coaches have contracts that run through the 2008 season with total guaranteed money of more than $1 million.

Doba, who received a five-year contract when he was hired in 2003, had his contract extended through the 2009 season two years ago.

If he is let go at the end of this season, he is due in the neighborhood of $1.8 million.

There would also be an additional cost of bringing in a new staff.

The going rate for a head coach and staff is at least $3 million a season.

Doba is 10th among Pac-10 coaches in salary and is the only conference coach who doesn’t make a million dollars in base salary and other compensation.

Beyond the won-loss mark, Sterk notes some broader achievements for the football team.

“Some things people don’t see,” Sterk said. “I think we are second (in the Pac-10) to Stanford in our exhaustive graduation rate over a 10-year period and Bill’s been a big part of that. (Grade-point average) is the highest ever with our student athletes in football.

“So those are things that people don’t see that you think there is a solid base (the football program) is on, it’s just the wins and losses that you see on Saturday, there’s more exposure to that.”

There are other variables Sterk said he would take into account, including some personal ones.

“(You have to consider) the 40 individuals that are impacted along with our 120 student athletes,” he said. “You are talking 10 coaches along with their families and all that, it adds up really quick. It’s not something you take very lightly.”

“In the end,” he said, “when you make a decision, you try to balance fact and fiction. Fact is, there are a lot of things with Bill and the staff that have gone very well. Bill was Pac-10 coach of the year his first year and it’s not like Bill (is a) different (person).”