Jacob Thorpe: Washington State should get more than bragging rights for developing great QBs

Cougar Collective, by all accounts you did amazing work putting together a roughly million-dollar package to keep Washington State’s star quarterback. It didn’t work. It’s time to try something else.

WSU used to call itself “Quarterback U” because of all the signal -callers who came through Pullman before getting drafted by the NFL. The moniker still fits, the pitch is still the same: come throw passes in Pullman and get paid.

But now there’s an addendum: come to Pullman and get paid … by your next school.

For the second straight year Cougars coach Jake Dickert has seen his quarterback leave Pullman as the most coveted passer in the transfer portal and, with players reportedly getting name, image, likeness deals on par with what NFL first-rounders used to make, he’s making it part of the recruiting pitch. What else can he do?

“Biggest thing for our program is it proves, once again, our process is working. Our process is working. We’re offering a bunch of kids that have no other Power Five offers. We’re developing them into something really, really special.”

That’s a pragmatic, forward-thinking message from a man for whom it surely was not easy to say. Not while watching Cam Ward, the QB who transferred from WSU last season, leading Miami to one of its best seasons in decades and finishing fourth in the Heisman trophy voting.

But here’s the thing. If the Cougars are going to become a feeder program for the blue bloods – and make no mistake, they are – then there should be some compensation when they do it well. They should be able to improve their program for the investments they make in players on behalf of the richer schools.

It would be a great way to start to restore faith in a system that few seem to approve of, even those at the top.

This is an issue that other sports have figured out. In international soccer leagues when one of the big -name teams takes an upcoming star from a smaller team, they pay what is called a “transfer fee.” 

The team buying the player gives money to the smaller market team. The smaller market team gives up a future star who probably wasn’t going to stick around anyway, and has some funds to improve its roster.

And college football has already figured out a mechanism to do this, one with which the coaches are intimately familiar: the beloved buyout clause. Let’s take a recent, semilocal example, that of Kalen’s DeBoer’s leaving Washington for Alabama. In his contract with UW he had to pay $12 million for leaving early, an expense that Alabama of course assumed as the cost of doing business.

The Huskies took that $12 million into their accounts and it helped them afford Arizona’s Jedd Fisch, who himself had a $5.5 million buyout. UW got a new coach and had $6.5 million left over. No reason to think this couldn’t be done with quarterbacks, with the Cougars getting some money from whichever school with which Mateer signs. That money can go toward another quarterback, and maybe some offensive line help, too.

Here is where the Cougar Collective comes in. Since NIL is still the only mechanism for paying players, this would have to be done by the collectives that have formed to facilitate these payments. At WSU  it’s the Cougar Collective.

These groups exist because the NCAA maintains some token, somewhat comedic rules around the NIL deals players form with companies such as “deals can’t be tied to athletic performance” and “NIL can’t be used as a recruiting tool.” Right. Apparently Mateer is just that good at visiting sick kids, or whatever.

The collectives are there to do some creative thinking and come up with semantic ways to get around the rules. Often this takes the form of having the players perform some token charity appearance, in exchange for oodles of money, that is NOT based on athletic performance, wink-wink.

Most outrageously, some collectives have even been granted 501(c)(3) status because of these tenuous charitable fronts. Write WSU superfan and newly elected congressman Michael Baumgartner and tell him to look into it.

So, Cougar Collective. Find some way to make the next up-and-coming WSU QB pay you a buyout if he transfers out. Yes, I’m sure there are rules against it. I’m also sure there are rules against pretty much everything NIL collectives do, and the creative thinking and ingenuity you’ve shown this month can find a way.

At the very least, the money you are giving WSU players for something other than athletic performance should be repaid if they leave the team before the bowl game.

Come up with some clever legalese for the contract.

Trust me, a high school kid enrolling at WSU isn’t going to turn down your money because their next school might have to pay you back for it.