Wulff 'anxious' for WSU debut
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 1:21 PM PDT
By Gregg Bell
The Associated Press
Printable version
E-mail this articleSEATTLE — Paul Wulff stood tall on the mound, stretching out his shiny, new, white Mariners game jersey. He then fired a hard, low strike that seemed to startle Sean Green, the Seattle reliever who was catching a ceremonial first pitch from Washington State's new football coach.
"I hear we need a few new pitchers. That looked pretty good," a team security attendant joked to Wulff in the tunnel under the stands just before the last-place Mariners played the Boston Red Sox.
Sorry, Wulff has enough to do in his day job.
The former four-year starter at center for WSU from 1986-89, and most recently the coach at Eastern Washington, is busy preparing for his first preseason camp as the Cougars' coach. The camp starts Aug. 5 in Pullman. The consensus around the Pac-10 is that with a new regime and record-setting quarterback Alex Brink graduated from last season's 5-7 team, Washington State is bound for the bottom of the conference in 2008.
"We still have a lot of unsettled answers to find," Wulff said, toying with his souvenir ball that Green signed after catching. "Spring football is only 15 days. There are players who will do well in camp that we don't even know about yet."
Yet Wulff, a three-time coach of the year in the Big Sky Conference while at EWU, is setting high standards for his first season with the Cougars.
"Our goal is to definitely get to a bowl game," he said, knowing the Cougars haven't been to one since the 2003 Holiday Bowl. "And we just want to play solid football. Make people earn it, if they are going to beat us."
One player Wulff does know about: Gary Rogers. The 6-foot-6 redshirt senior from Mukilteo, Wash., is done being Brink's backup. He'll be the starting quarterback, making his first start on Aug. 30 when the Cougars open against Oklahoma State at Qwest Field.
And Wulff knows who Rogers will be looking for most of the time. Star receiver Brandon Gibson is back, on the watch list for the Maxwell Award that annually goes to the nation's most outstanding college football player.
The 40-year-old Wulff was named to replace Bill Doba at Washington State in December, agreeing to a five-year contract worth $600,000 a year — about $500,000 more than he earned at EWU.
He said he was excited to get the season going, if only to get past the negativity surrounding the program recently.
An NCAA academic performance review in May found WSU football substandard, costing the Cougars eight scholarships. The program was the only sport among the four Division I programs in the state — including Washington, Eastern Washington and Gonzaga — to face potential scholarship losses.
A few weeks later, Wulff released top quarterback recruit Calvin Schmidtke of Lakes High School from his agreement to play football at WSU. Schmidtke, one of 25 players signed in Wulff's first recruiting class with the Cougars, was arrested in Pierce County for investigation in a variety of traffic and controlled substance violations.
"We're anxious to move forward, move beyond the negativity," Wulff said, with his wife, stepfather and stepbrother in tow. "So much of it is a carry-over. We really haven't had current issues."
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