Coach Mike Leach discusses
reporting injuries, quarterback competition
He addresses coaching changes, won't reveal
injuries to players until he is forced
By JACKSON GARDNER, Evergreen
July 25, 2018
WSU Head Coach Mike Leach discussed
recruiting players to Pullman, coaching changes and disclosing player injuries
at the 2018 Pac-12 Media Day in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Some of the usual antics Leach
partakes in at his pressers were more reserved while he sat in front of a
national audience. His full presser went a little under 25 minutes. Some
questions he dug into, some he gave the classic levelheaded coach’s response.
Leach started his presser fielding
questions about the death of Tyler Hilinski. Leach kept his responses short and
quick when it came to addressing how he and the team have handled Hilinski’s
death.
“We all have very fond memories of
Tyler, were proud that we had the opportunity to know him,” Leach said. “But
then also, he would want us to … move on and have productive lives and elevate
what we can do.”
After a few questions regarding
Hilinski and his approach to dealing with mental health, Leach was asked about
how he gets recruits to come to the Palouse. The question nearly sent Leach
into a rant on how terrible traffic in Los Angeles is, but he showed restraint
and got back to what makes Pullman a fantastic place.
“We’re a college town and we offer
something that they don’t,” Leach said. “You guys might love the traffic in
L.A., there’s a lot of great things about L.A., you might sit in the car listen
to the radio, look at the person beside you, get flipped off … well you don’t
get to do that in Pullman.”
Leach added that the pride Cougar
fans have for their team is what sets WSU apart.
“365 days a year it’s the Cougs,”
he said. “They’ll remember a game you played the rest of your life, this isn’t
a deal where you might have the game of your life and you walk three blocks
down and they didn’t even know you had a game. No, they know you had a game and
they know it was a big deal.”
Another inevitable question Leach
was bound to face was how the Cougars would handle all the coaching changes,
with five coaches from Leach’s staff leaving during the offseason.
Leach pointed out he has developed
a talented coaching tree over the years that has led to many of his assistant
coaches getting opportunities to advance their respective careers elsewhere.
He said the new voices in the
coaching room fit in perfectly right away.
“We got another group of guys now,
it has been a fairly seamless transition,” Leach said. “That’s one thing that
is beneficial offensively with me coordinating the offense, as we get new
coaches, we aren’t reinventing the wheel, it’s the same deal. I’m there to plug
everyone in.”
The next topic for Leach was the
prospect of being forced to give out an injury report, which he doesn’t
currently.
Leach pointed out that he is in
fact not a doctor, thus making him unqualified to talk about injuries. Then, he
cited laws that prevent revealing someone’s medical record and the legalization
of sports gambling as a situation where he will be wrong one way or the other.
Whether it is because he isn’t a
doctor or he truly believes it’s a legal issue, Leach said he won’t be
revealing injuries anytime soon.
“I’m not going to reveal injuries,
even if I’m qualified to, until I’m forced” he said. “They might force me, I
doubt it, but they might and if they do well I’ll try and figure out a way
around it.”
Leach also addressed the
uncertainty around the Cougars quarterback situation and said graduate transfer
Gardner Minshew, redshirt junior Trey Tinsley, redshirt junior Anthony Gordon
and freshman Cammon Cooper are all in the mix for the starting job.
“The challenge for us is going to
be to select the right guy,” he said. “But I think we’d probably have three or
four choices, all of which would do a really good job.”
For the last seven minutes of
Leach’s presser, media members made an attempt to send Leach on one of his classic
rants but none of the questions seemed to strike a cord with Leach.
He took a question about Jimmy
Buffet’s song “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” being written about him, which Leach
responded to nonchalantly stating he doesn’t know Buffet and he has no
knowledge of that.
Another reporter wanted to know
where around the country Leach loves going, to which Leach answered with his
favorite recruiting destination of “The Inland Empire” in Southern California.
Leach didn’t take any questions
regarding his Twitter usage that put him in the spotlight this summer after he
tweeted out a fake video of former President Barack Obama insulting citizens’
intelligence on June 17.
Leach’s full press conference can
be viewed at Pac-12.com
………………..
WSU Cougars say new QB Gardner
Minshew getting quickly acclimated to Air Raid offense
Originally published July 25, 2018
at 5:58 pm
Washington State head coach Mike
Leach speaks at the Pac-12 Conference NCAA college football Media Day in Los
Angeles, Wednesday, July 25, 2018.
Minshew will join WSU's quarterback
competition after transferring from East Carolina.
By Adam Jude, Seattle Times staff
reporter
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The first
message Washington State senior receiver Kyle Sweet received this summer from
his new quarterback was less a request and more of a command.
I’m going to throw tomorrow,
Gardner Minshew texted Sweet upon his arrival in Pullman. Meet me on the field.
Sweet was happy to comply. Happy,
too, to pass along a positive scouting report about the transfer QB from East
Carolina.
The first thing to jump out about
Minshew?
“He’s got a cannon,” Sweet said.
Beyond arm talent, Minshew has
worked hard to acquit himself with his new teammates — and his new receivers in
particular — since arriving in Pullman earlier this summer.
“He’s very acclimated to the
program,” Sweet said at Pac-12 Football Media Day on Wednesday. “He’s one of
the most sincere people I’ve met. Just a typical Southern boy and he was raised
very well and he’s very well-mannered. He’s awesome. He’s already stepped into
that leadership role, too. That’s very encouraging to see a new guy step in
like that and take over the reins.”
Washington State announced the
arrival of Minshew, a 6-foot-2, 216-pound Mississippi native, in May, after the
quarterback flirted with the idea of transferring to Alabama. As a graduate
transfer, Minshew will be eligible to play immediately for the Cougars this
season, and he will join a competition with Trey Tinsley and Anthony Gordon
when fall camp begins next week.
Tinsley and Gordon have the
advantage of two years’ experience in Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense, but
Minshew is the only QB on the roster with FBS experience.
“I just haven’t seen enough to
where I can make comparisons,” Sweet said. “But they’re all good in their own
way, they’re all special in their own way, and it’s going to be fun during camp
who’s going to get that starting job.”
Minshew played in 10 games,
starting five, at East Carolina last season, throwing for 2,140 yards with 16
touchdowns, seven interceptions and completing 57.2 percent of his passes.
“He’s older. Has some experience in
kind of leadership quality, I think,” WSU coach Mike Leach said. “He’s really
accurate. Getting acclimated with our players and our schemes, somewhat, but
his scheme, he’s been around our scheme some. So there’s that. But it will be a
heck of a battle, because I thought Gordon and Tinsley both had really good
springs, and I think both of those guys will be difficult to beat out.
“You’ve got a lot of talent in
(freshman) Cammon Cooper, who as he gets used to being a college football
player, and he had a really good off-season. That will be exciting to see too.”
Cougars picked fifth
That the WSU was predicted to
finish fifth in the Pac-12 North wasn’t necessarily a surprise to the Cougars
on Wednesday. But they do expect to offer some surprises on the field this
fall.
“We’re always the underdog,” safety
Jalen Thompson said. “I feel like we’re going to come out and shock some
people.”
The Cougars have just 10 returning
starters and the least experienced roster in the Pac-12.
“We’ve been like that the last
couple years. We’ve always played with a chip on our shoulder, always been the underdog,”
Sweet said. “It’s nothing new. We’ve been here before, and we’re just going to
go out and buy in and do what we need to do to be successful.”
………….
NCAA football/WSU football
Pac-12’s game-shortening program to
include 30 games, ESPN/FOX broadcasts in 2018
UPDATED: Wed., July 25, 2018, 10:23
a.m.
By Theo Lawson Spokane S-R
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Measures taken
by the Pac-12 Conference in 2017 to truncate the length of football games will
continue in 2018 and expand to include select conference and ESPN/Fox Sports televised
games, the league announced Wednesday.
In response to fan and broadcaster
feedback, the conference launched the pilot program last season, shortening 15
games in an effort to enhance the fan experience.
The initiative will grow to at
least 30 games this season, after an initial test only involving Pac-12
Networks games garnered positive feedback from universities, broadcasters and
fans. The experiment shaved off eight minutes in average broadcast window and
five minutes in average game time, according to the Pac-12.
“It may not sound like a lot, but
it resulted in fewer games being joined in progress,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry
Scott said Wednesday at the conference’s Media Day in Hollywood. “I know many
in college sports have been closely following our pilot program as they
evaluate what to do themselves to tackle the issue of game length.”
Game-shortening measures will once
again include curtailed halftime segments, from 20 minutes to 15 minutes, in
addition to restructured commercial formats and enhanced in-game advertising.
Kickoff times additionally will be moved from :07 to :01 after the start of the
broadcast window.
“We are in favor of maximizing the
college football viewer and fan experience” said Nick Dawson, ESPN Vice
President
Programming and Acquisitions. “We
commend the Pac-12 for pushing this initiative, while also collaborating with
us on its rollout. We look forward to studying the results following the
season.”
Pac-12 introduces on-campus show
The Pac-12 Networks will launch a
new “Pregame” show this fall that will follow a format similiar to that of the
popular ESPN College GameDay segement.
An hour-long live show entitled
“The Pregame” will debut the second week of the season and stop at all 12
institutions in the conference over the course of the season.
As part of the 12-week tour, Pac-12
Networks crews will begin their on-site coverage the Wednesday leading up to
Saturday gamedays, “with content appearing across the networks’ linear, digital
and social media channels every day.”
………
Pullman City Council hears pitch for creative
districts
Emphasizing
artistic, cultural opportunities could drive economic development, job growth
- By William L. Spence Lewiston Trib 7/25/2018
Informational presentations
dominated much of Tuesday's Pullman City Council meeting, including a review of
Washington state's newly authorized creative districts.
Annette Roth, who serves as creative
district program manager for ArtsWA, said the state-certified districts can
drive economic development and job growth by emphasizing artistic and cultural
opportunities in the community.
"They're a way to spur
entrepreneurship and small business development," she said. "This is
one of about a dozen similar programs around the country. It's loosely based on
the one in Colorado. They have 12 districts, which have seen exceptional
growth."
The Washington program just launched
in January, Roth said, so no districts have been created yet. Within the next
five or six years, however, she anticipates 20-25 districts being certified
around the state.
Communities that are interested in
pursuing state certification need to designate an organization to administer
the program, such as a downtown association or Main Street group. They would
then develop a plan for how the district will contribute to community vitality
and evolve over time.
"If you decide this is
something you want to pursue, you'd submit an application (to ArtsWA),"
Roth said. "We have a panel that determines whether a community gets a
creative designation."
More information about the benefits
of creative districts and the application process is available at www.arts.wa.gov.
Roth's presentation was followed by
a summary of a Pullman League of Women Voters study regarding poverty levels in
Whitman County.
Brice Erickson with the Pullman
Downtown Business Association also discussed problems and opportunities
associated with parking in the core downtown business district.
"Parking downtown has always
been a hot issue," said Erickson, who owns B&L Bicycles. "We have
three different user groups competing for spaces:
customers and visitors, employees
and local residents. ... The bottom line is we have a very fixed inventory of
parking spaces."
There are about 654 public parking
spots in the downtown core, he said, including on- and off-street locations.
Over the long term, the downtown
association wants the city to pursue a comprehensive parking management system
that provides the data needed to maximize the utilization of different parking
spots.
In the short term, however, the
group is recommending that the free parking along Main Street between Kamiaken
Street and Grand Avenue be switched from a two-hour to a one-hour time limit.
That would encourage greater turnover in those parking spots, Erickson said,
which could ease the impression that there's no parking downtown because the
curbside spots are all full.
Finally, the group is encouraging
the city to do some "housekeeping" on its off-street parking lots,
including repainting the parking space lines and clearing vegetation away from
signs.
"These are just Band-Aid
solutions to something that really needs to be looked at comprehensively,"
Erickson said.
::::::::::::::
Pullman Fire Fighters to be Guest
Readers at Neill Public Library Tomorrow
From Pullman Radio news
Fire Fighters from Pullman Fire
Department will be the guest readers form Story Time at the Neill Public
Library in Pullman, in the library’s Heritage Addition tomorrow morning, from
10:30 – 11:15 am.
The fire fighters will be reading
some of their favorite books and sharing information about fire safety. There is no charge for this free program and
pre-registration is not required.
