WSU football is not at a recruiting disadvantage

Membership in a Power Five conference is a huge privilege for any participating college athletic department.

The Power Five consists of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big-12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference. Member schools are expected to flaunt the best overall athletic departments and sustain considerable funding for their national media platforms.

Looking at a map, the majority of the Power Five schools reside in the more densely populated regions of the East Coast. Conversely, the Pac-12 is the only conference to represent the western half of the U.S.

The West Coast is comprised of more of an open range, agriculturally-driven population outside of the majority of the Pac-12. Contrary to the perception that there is an imbalance of Power Five schools coast-to-coast, the playing field in recruiting and booster-ism is relatively level across the board.

WSU fits the bill for an academic institution principally rooted in an agrarian community with a smaller student enrollment. In reality, WSU’s total enrollment figure and topography make it seem more fitting for the Big Sky or Mountain West conferences as opposed to the Pac-12, a conference featuring the mass media markets of Seattle, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.

However, being tucked behind a valley of hills in a college-town-atmosphere is not a burden. Rather, Pullman’s geographic location provides WSU with recruiting advantages not present within a majority of the Power Five athletic departments.

Offering a unique lifestyle and university culture to its student-athletes, WSU is separate from the “Pac.”

Football, universally, is the moneymaking sport for a college athletic department. Pullman’s blue-collar, farming-based community breeds American football, making the WSU football program in itself an intriguing destination for recruits.

“In the Pac-12 Conference, there are only two true college towns, Pullman and Corvallis, and recruits love to see the community involvement in WSU Athletics,” said Dave Emerick, WSU football chief of staff and recruiting coordinator.

WSU football has a long history of fielding some of the nation’s best teams and generating nationally-recognized recruiting classes.

WSU’s glory days date as far back as the mid-1970’s with star quarterback Jack Thompson, who was drafted third overall in the 1979 NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals. Then, in the 1980s, WSU recruited a host of standout players, including eventual Super Bowl-winning quarterback Mark Rypien and first-team All-American lineman Mike Utley.

After former WSU Head Coach Dennis Erickson left for the University of Miami in 1989, the Cougars hired Mike Price, who coached the Cougs through the 2002 season before leaving for the same position at the University of Alabama. Price recruited some of WSU’s most iconic players, namely former NFL quarterbacks Drew Bledsoe, Ryan Leaf and Jason Gesser, safety Steve Gleason, defensive tackle Rien Long and cornerback Marcus Trufant.

The point being, recruiting on the Palouse must not be taken on the surface level as a disadvantage. History has proven that Rose Bowl appearances are not alien to WSU and are a byproduct of a fundamental recruiting platform and culture.

After Price left, WSU returned to a lull, trying to regain identity or perhaps forge a new one completely. When former WSU President Elson Floyd hired former University of Oregon Athletic Director Bill Moos to the same position in 2010, the dominoes fell in place to clean up the pigsty that was the WSU football program after Paul Wulff’s tenure.

The ball was in Moos’ court to replicate his success in Eugene in Pullman. Moos made his key move in 2012, hiring air raid guru Mike Leach to be the program’s next head coach. The results were far from instantaneous, but it was clear that the future was transparent, as Leach instituted a system he was confident would work.

“Coach Leach is the leader of this problem (recruiting to the Palouse),” Emerick said. “He has such a big name, he has had so much success over the years, and he has such an interesting personality that recruits love to talk with him.”

In 2013, the Cougars returned to the postseason for the first time in a decade with a New Mexico Bowl appearance. WSU has played in back-to-back bowl games the last two seasons under Leach, winning one and losing the other.

Since Leach’s arrival, the Cougars have hovered around 50th nationally in recruiting rankings, according to scout.com. On Feb. 1, Leach reeled in the most highly-regarded recruiting class of his five-year tenure, posting the 38th-best recruiting class, according to scout.com.

Now that WSU has solidified itself back into the annual postseason discussion, the current focus is no longer on simply qualifying for a bowl game, but rather contending for Pac-12 Championships. At Texas Tech and now at WSU, Leach has proven himself as a change agent in rebuilding a football culture through stable recruiting.

“We are able to sell our recent success, three bowl games in last four years, 13-5 Pac-12 record last two years, and show recruits that WSU is a program on the rise,” Emerick said.

With spring workouts just underway, both the program’s history and Leach’s track record indicate that the football team may take another step forward out on the Palouse.

Mid-Term Essay: Aaron Hernandez

For my mid-term essay, I decided to read and analyze the compelling timeline of former NFL tight end Aaron Hernandez as a child, all the way through to his arrest and murder charge of Odin Lloyd. This article named “The Gangster in the Huddle” was really well-done by Rolling Stone writers Paul Solotaroff and Ron Borges. Published on August 28^th, 2013, the article was written during the most chaotic of times as news was basically breaking on this case every other day. The article was included in the 2014 edition of The Best American Sports Writing, edited by Christopher McDougall.

Initially, as I opened The Best American Sports Writing, I was just trying to find an article that was intriguing and that I already had some basis of knowledge. To my surprise, that article popped on page 1. The Aaron Hernandez story was the first story in the book. They must be telling me that’s the best story in the book.

Regarding the whole Aaron Hernandez saga, I knew that he was considered a trouble-maker and a thug, but to learn about his childhood background and how these things came about brought some clarity to the situation. Finding out all the steps that lead up to Odin Lloyd’s death doesn’t justify anything that Aaron and his friends did, but it does let you know why he had the tendencies of making some of these decisions.

The writing and reporting throughout this story is very articulate and timely. I believe they didn’t want to leave anything out that they thought might have been important to how Hernandez grew up and what might have triggered him into some of the decisions he made. They also used unnamed friends of the past as sources to get a deeper and more exclusive look at how Aaron behaved during his childhood.

The beginning of the story details the night Aaron Hernandez picked up Odin Lloyd before he was shot and killed in an industrial park near Hernandez’ home. Lloyd had just been out with Hernandez the previous 36 hours popping bottles, hitting strip clubs and even smoking that “super-duper”. You could say Lloyd was loving being around a $40 million-man day in and day out. Hernandez reeled in a gullible Lloyd at his disposal.

Hernandez grew up in Bristol, Connecticut, where his dad played football at the University of Connecticut. His father, Dennis, like Aaron, loved to have fun on his free time, getting high and drunk often and doing things like breaking into houses. Dennis and his friends even ended up smoking crack eventually. Having a father-figure that is into drugs and crime has a direct effect on the child growing up and witnessing these things. With Aaron’s dad in and out of trouble throughout his childhood, Aaron began to separate himself from immediate family and instead found comfort from his father’s brother-in-law Tito, who always had “dubious” people hanging out there. Here, Hernandez began experimenting with angel-dust, a drug that makes you tweak out mentally and makes you sweat outrageously. All these drugs gave Hernandez an escape for life’s unfairness and the things he’d experienced so far in life.

Aaron always had his intentions on going to UCONN like his dad, but after his dad Dennis passed away, Hernandez decided to make a new path at the highly-touted University of Florida. The messiah, Urban Meyer, was committed to bringing Hernandez to Gainesville as he has had success in the past reforming players lives.

Hernandez always had that reputation of getting off easy in legal situations and that trend continued as he first stepped onto campus at Florida. Hernandez got into a physical altercation at a bar where he punched a waiter in the head, but the waiter didn’t press charges. His sophomore year, Hernandez was benched for the season opener, meaning he’d likely failed drug tests over the Summer, but Meyer insisted “he wasn’t ready to play”.

After the Gator’s won the National Championship in 2008 behind Tim Tebow, Hernandez’ stock was booming, being a first-team All-American, the 2009 John Mackey award winner and slated to be a first-round pick in the 2010 NFL Draft. The path was set for Hernandez to forget everything behind him and start a fresh NFL career. Instead, Hernandez decides to get involved in another altercation outside a bar, this time with the Pouncey brother’s and ex-Gator safety Reggie Nelson. Another case where Hernandez walked away unscathed.

Worried about his draft stock, Hernandez penned a letter to all 32 teams stating he was done with all the nonsensical behavior and proposed to take eight drug tests during the season, returning a portion of his paycheck if found dirty. The one team to take a chance on him, Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick and the evil empire that is the New England Patriots. It is very fitting that they took a chance on him as they are an organization that prides itself on innovation and challenges. As things began to ramp up in Hernandez’ personal life, the Patriots organization began to notice something was off. Initially after Odin Lloyd’s death, Hernandez began to avoid all contact with the team besides going to practice and doing the minimal amount. Several Patriot teammates called him a “loner” and saying “No one hung with him”.

The following year after the Patriots lost in the AFC Title game to the Baltimore Ravens, Hernandez contacted Belichick at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, telling him that his own life is in danger.

As it stands right now, Hernandez is paying a team of strong lawyers to defend him in his first-degree murder and weapons charges. The trail of evidence left at the crime scene includes text’s and calls to the victims phone, then leaving the phone on the dead man’s body for the cops to find. Wallace and Ortiz would lead the cops back to Uncle Tito’s house in Bristol, the same place where Aaron Hernandez’ life began to spiral downward.

Regarding the writing style of the story, this was definitely a feature piece because of how in-depth it goes and the amount of quotes they get from anonymous sources and even identified sources. The precise timeline of the story makes it a feature as well because this article obviously took a long period of time to make.  I am so glad I read this article because now I know how he grew up and what led him to some of the decisions that he made.