Steve Christilaw: WSU QB meetings have own twist

I am one of those people who has spent their entire career trying hard to avoid meetings.

Even the ones that offer pastry as a bribe to ensure attendance. I have even been known to get out of meetings that offer really, really good bagels with cream cheese – and those meetings take a master’s level skill set. Against a combination of donuts and bagels, meeting managers usually wind up with perfect attendance.

Maybe it’s something about a get-together that requires an agenda that rankles me. The ones in which the meeting chair goes around the table to check in with everyone. That part’s enjoyable enough, I suppose. Especially if you like the people in your meeting. After that …

Still, there are some meetings it might be fun to sit in on – meetings that don’t involve strategic planning and mission agendas.

For the record, those team meetings immediately after a team has lost its last game at the state tournament? Having stood by during more than a few of those I can definitely tell you that they are not on the list of fun meetings.

In his book, “Ball Four,” the late Jim Bouton wrote about his time with the Seattle Pilots and the meetings the pitching staff had with coach Sal Maglie on how to work against the hitters they were scheduled to face in each game.

Maglie is one of the few men to have played for the Giants, Dodgers and Yankees while the three teams were still located in New York, and he earned his nickname, “Sal the Barber,” because he was known to give opposing batters “a close shave” – meaning he used his hard breaking ball to work inside.

Maglie always told his pitchers to throw the curve inside against everyone.

Problem was, Bouton wrote, there were very few pitchers who could throw a curve hard enough to make that work.

It would have been fun to be a fly on the wall in offensive meetings with San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh or Sid Gillman, who developed the concept of stretching the football field during his time coaching the Chargers and Rams. When someone is that innovative it would be fascinating to see how the game gets broken down into digestible chunks.

I would love to have been there during the meetings Branch Rickey held as he planned on breaking the color line in professional baseball by signing Jackie Robinson.

There’s a sadistic part of me that would love to go back and sit in on those Portland Trail Blazers meetings that determined that the NBA team would take 6-foot-11 Loyola of Chicago center LaRue Martin with their No. 1 draft pick instead of, oh, say Bob McAdoo or Julius Erving.

Quarterback meetings at Washington State University are now on my list.

Writing for The Athletic.com, former Seattle Times writer Jayson Jenks talked with a group of former Cougar quarterbacks to find out just what goes on behind those closed doors in Pullman when Mike Leach and his signal-callers gather to discuss his Air Raid offense.

Turns out, a lot goes on. Just not all that much about the Air Raid. Or even football.

Jenks talked to Austin Apodaca, Connor Halliday, Alex Brink, Tyler Bruggman and Jeff Tuel, among others.

I have sat through a number of meetings with Leach and, admittedly, they have been unlike most of the meetings I have been in with a relatively small sample size of college football coaches.

Leach is famous for taking flights of fancy when he meets with reporters – talking about pirates or Geronimo or anything else that pops into his head at any given moment. His rambling conversations with reporters at the Pac-12 annual preseason meetings are legendary.

Turns out, his quarterback meetings are more of the same.

To start, the coach is rarely on time for his own meeting and he’s been known to answer cellphone calls from reporters while in the meeting.

And some of his quarterbacks have become adept at sparking some of his favorite stories on his favorite topics – something that used to drive former quarterback Luke Falk nuts. Falk loved to get into his full warm-up before practice and excessive storytelling cut into his practice time.

And it turns out that Leach likes his coffee.

Halliday told about how position meetings turned into more of a hangout session that featured a Cuban coffee maker the coach calls “Bucci” that makes really, really, really strong coffee.

Quarterbacks keep notebooks to dissect plays and go over past mistakes. Instead, Leach was more likely to discuss the rodeo in Cody, Wyoming, or lessons he learned while surfing in California.

Those three-hour meetings between the coach and his quarterbacks?

Not so much about football.

Which puts the current quarterback battle between three seniors heading into the Cougs’ season-opener in a different context than you would normally expect.

Leach has always said he devised his famous pass-happy offense to be the most simple plan imaginable. Simple plays. Simple principles. Something anyone with a passing familiarity with its ins and outs can run it.

Just go out and do the job. Make plays.

And that fits right in with one of the most important points Leach has stressed since he arrived in Pullman.

Winning football isn’t about guys going out and making big, game-winning plays. It’s about each player going out and doing his job, play after play.

When you look at it that way, when you break the game into bite-sized chunks, playbooks are easier to comprehend and digest.

Good to know.