WSU’s Jake Dickert obviously knows his X’s and O’s, but his thoughts on the NCAA are next-level brilliance

 

Dave Boling: WSU’s Jake Dickert obviously knows his X’s and O’s, but his thoughts on the NCAA are next-level brilliance

 

By Dave Boling Spokane  Spokesman-Review 8 Aug 2024

 

If you need to talk to a college football coach, your best chance is in the middle of the summer.

 

By then, the heartache from the last loss has eased slightly, and the anxiety building toward the season opener still has a month before sprouting full peptic ulcers.

 

I caught Washington State’s Jake Dickert in that sweet spot, mid-July, when he was able to field some questions in his office at the imposing Cougar Football Complex.

 

It took only a few minutes of interviewing to grow impressed by his highly organized mind. Aside from numerous insights, the biggest takeaway was Dickert’s thorough and incisive response to any inquisition thrown at him.

 

Answers sometimes arrived supported by bullet points, with alternatives and contingencies ready to apply to various circumstances.

 

A nimble mind is a valuable quality in a time of such intransigence and rampant uncertainties. Who’s staying? Who’s going? Who are we going to play? And, perhaps most important, where’s the money coming from?

 

One question at the end of his interview triggered a response so in-depth that it deserved its own column (we’ll get to the others closer to the season). Coach Dickert, what can be done to fix college football?

 

He chuckled at the question, as if warning me that he had put his mind to the issue. After all, it is his life’s work.

 

“I think the first thing that needs to happen is the NCAA needs to break into three divisions,” Dickert said. “The football division, men’s and women’s basketball divisions, and an Olympic sports division. You have to run and operate those things with three different viewpoints. We’re all trying to fit into the same humongous pots when those are really three different ventures. However that looks, I think we need to be able to govern ourselves in our realm, as a money-making revenue sport.”

 

For too long, he said, the NFL has avoided sharing any revenue with college football, which serves as its minor leagues.

 

He sees an upper division being created “where, say, the top 40 schools create an NFL-type deal, with, maybe four 10-team regional leagues that do their own thing.”

 

For now, he sees Washington State fitting in the next division. “I would love to see it go back to a little more amateurism, maybe with some NIL (name, image and likeness) stuff. I think that would be really cool for Washington State to have a chance to go win a national championship at that division if you invest. I think that would be phenomenal, but there’s a lot of work to how the revenue streams get sorted out to compensate the athlete the right way.”

 

If Dickert were in charge, he also would align the football schedule with the college class (semester) timeline.

 

“I would love to see games start being played in mid-August,” he said. “There’s nothing on TV and you could play games Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday the last two weeks in August. That allows Thanksgiving weekend to be the first round of a 28-team playoff. You would do away with the conference championships – these teams have 18 teams in their leagues and they play eight; how do you get a conference champion out of that schedule?”

 

The August window would add great exposure value to college football, he said.

 

In terms of recruiting and the transfer portal, Dickert works closely with program general manager Rob Schlaeger. “He’s the most detailed, articulate and well-thought-out planner, and we do tons of this stuff together,” Dickert said.

 

Dickert described the current state of college sports as “Moneyball,” citing the book and movie about the Oakland A’s becoming competitive by using analytics to combat fiscal disadvantages.

 

“College football is now Major League Baseball – unsalary-capped,” Dickert said. “The guys with money can spend it. If you’re Oakland, and you develop Jason Giambi, you’re going to lose him to the Yankees.”

 

In this analogy, WSU is Oakland. “Same with us; who’s going to be here? How are you going to develop them? In the transfer portal, you have got to find the guy who has certain metrics, but he gets overlooked and comes to you.”

 

In the process, the importance of effective roster-building “has been exponentially increased,” he said.

 

Players with unlimited free agency may seem like commodities, but they can’t be treated as such.

 

“You have to talk to players about controlling their environment and having realistic expectations,” he said.

 

Dickert said that talented quarterback Cam Ward provided the prime example. And honest communication was a key.

 

“You’ve got a 21-year-old kid trying to do his best every Saturday, and that drastically matters to his future,” Dickert said. “What I want to do is take the pressure off. ‘Cam, I’m with you, let’s talk about it, let’s have these conversations and make sure this is not a weight on your shoulders.’ ”

 

Ward transferred to Miami. The online website On3 listed his NIL value at just below $1 million. Life-changing money. The coach agreed that the move was the right thing for Ward to do.

 

Dickert took over late in the 2021 season, amid coaching chaos, a pandemic and a national athletic enterprise erasing its long-held set of rules. Through it all, his Cougars have gone 15-16.

 

Of course, everything about college sports could change within the next week.

 

But Dickert may already have a plan outlined for such things.

‘I want to be here,’ WSU women’s hoops coach Kamie Ethridge details program vision

‘I want to be here,’ WSU women’s hoops coach Ethridge details program vision

With a new conference, new AD and new team, Ethridge remains

By Sam Taylor Lewiston Tribune  July 28, 2024

In a matter of months, Washington State lost its volleyball coach, men’s basketball coach and athletic director as it prepares to enter a new age of college athletics in the wake of the Pac-12 Conference’s collapse.

One coach who has remained? Six-year Women’s basketball coach Kamie Ethridge.

“I want to be here,” Ethridge said in May. “I don’t think there’s very many jobs that can be better than this job. You know, the fact that we’re able to retain most of our athletes and they’re not hitting the portal, the fact that we can continue to have success in recruiting. I really do believe I’m in a situation where I’m not looking to leave, and I feel very much supported here.”

The former National Coach of the Year and College Basketball Hall of Famer has made the postseason in each of her past four seasons, including three straight NCAA Tournaments. She led the Cougs to the 2023 Pac-12 Tournament Championship in Las Vegas, WSU’s first women’s conference championship in school history.

Ethridge recruited program legends Charlisse Leger-Walker and Bella Murekatete and has assembled a current roster that has included an All-Pac-12 freshman selection in each of the last two years – Astera Tuhina in 2023 and Eleonora Villa in 24.

With renowned recruiting and winning records, Coug fans seemed sure that Ethridge would be gone within a matter of weeks following a 2023–24 season in which the Cougs weathered the loss of Leger-Walker to a season-ending knee injury to reach the semifinals of the inaugural Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament.

Instead, after WSU had endured the departures of two head coaches and an athletic director in the nine months since news of the Pac-12’s destruction dropped, Ethridge signed a one-year extension, her third straight such deal. Her contract runs through the 2029–30 season.

Ethridge said that former WSU AD Pat Chun, who left Pullman to take the helm of in-state rival University of Washington, painted the picture of how successful WSU women’s basketball could be.

“Believe me, our resources were 12 out of 12. We were 12th out of 12, you know, compared to everybody else in the league, but you don’t have to be first in the league in resources. You don’t have to be the first in facilities. You have to be first in people,” Ethridge said. “And I thought that (Chun) was an example of hiring great people and giving us the support that we needed, you know, and being okay with being who we are.

“We don’t have to apologize for being Washington State and living in Pullman. I love this place. I love the kinds of athletes we can attract here. And I think (Chun’s) vision was something really appealing to me.”

Ethridge said Chun’s vision aligned with what AD Anne McCoy, who has worked for WSU for over 20 years, holds.

While the Cougar coach is staying, WSU is losing someone who Ethridge said “changed the program forever.”

Charlisse Leger-Walker, third all-time leading scorer in program history, announced she was transferring to UCLA in May.

Ethridge said there was no doubt that Leger-Walker would have gone pro if she had not suffered a season-ending ACL injury Jan. 28. The injury gave her three options: Go pro anyway, return to WSU or enter the transfer portal.

“She grew up together with a group of players that— we were so young when they all came in, and now we’re really old, and they’re all leaving, you know, her best friends are leaving and I just think sometimes in life you get to the end of a road and you know, you don’t feel like ‘Oh, I need to start over in the same place,’” Ethridge said.

While Leger-Walker’s departure does leave a program-legend-sized hole in the roster, Ethridge is more than prepared to replace her with a strong international recruiting class and the continued development of program leaders Tara Wallack, Astera Tuhina and Eleonora Villa.

“We literally have 13 players that can all compete for a starting job. I mean, so we’re really really deep. I think we’re really versatile. I think we’re probably as talented as we’ve ever been, in a lot of ways, but it’s inexperienced talent right now. You know, like, like, there’s going to be some growing pains,” associate head coach Laurie Kohen said.

The program has found great success in recruiting and retaining student-athletes because they don’t promise too much up front, Ethridge said.

WSU does not have a name, image and likeness donor base on par with other schools.

“If they want money, then they probably won’t choose us,” Ethridge said.

“That’s one of the attractions of staying here: if I can continue to do it the way we’re doing it and not lose players and compete at a high level without getting into the world of, you know, NIL, I’d gladly you know, want to stay here and see if we can do something special here.”

While organizations such as the Cougar Collective, a collection of WSU alumni who want to support student-athletes with NIL opportunities, do their best, small crowds at WSU basketball games have become the norm.

Ethridge said she wants the women’s basketball team to win more and at the right time in order to catch a similar flame that the men’s team caught.

Kyle Smith’s Cougs were drawing just 3,000 people in mid-February, before getting ranked, beating Arizona in Tucson and hosting Bronny James and USC. That confluence of factors led to three straight 8,000-plus crowds with WSU’s final regular season game seeing a 9,000-person crowd.

Ethridge said the Cougs need to get out into the community and make a lot of friends who will go to games, from elementary school kids and their families to ZZU CRU, WSU’s organized student section.

“We need ZZU CRU to really get committed to us,” Ethridge said. “It usually starts well, we haven’t finished very well. I think we have a hard sport, because sometimes there’s four games a week. And then there’s two games the next week and you just want to take a break the next week. So you don’t go to those games and you know, we’re competing for the same person, right?”

Each player in their end-of-season exit interviews with Ethridge said they considered making the NCAA Tournament a top team goal.

WSU women’s basketball will compete in the West Coast Conference as an affiliate members for the next two seasons. The Cougs will play a full conference schedule alongside fellow remaining Pac-12 school Oregon State, guaranteeing them quality matchups against reigning tournament teams Gonzaga, Portland and OSU.

Ethridge said she is confident WSU women’s basketball can succeed in the WCC and nationally at an even greater level because her program prioritizes people.

From the nutritionist to the academic support staff to the trainers to her coaching staff, the Cougs offer a top-tier experience, Ethridge said.

“Those are the things that are gonna affect your life every single day,” Ethridge said. “So we want to make those elite and if we do that, I think we can continue to succeed in recruiting and getting great, great talent in choosing us and staying in here to be with us [for] four years.”

PHOTO: Coach Kamie Ethridge and WSU basketball team 3/6/2024 at Pac-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas. (Photo by News for CougGroup.

In new AD Anne McCoy, WSU gets a new leader — and a committed supporter of student-athletes

 In new AD Anne McCoy, WSU gets a new leader — and a committed supporter of student-athletes

July 16, 2024 Updated Tue., July 16, 2024 at 9:55 p.m.

By Greg Woods, Spokane Spokesman-Review

PULLMAN – Jake McCoy always knew when his mom was at his sister’s swim meets. He’d be watching the live stream of Taylor’s race, a couple years back when she swam for Washington State, and he’d hear a certain voice start cheering somewhere in the background.

“You can hear our mom,” Jake laughed. “You can hear her screaming. It’s hilarious. But then she sits down, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m nervous.’ ”

That would be Anne McCoy, who was introduced Tuesday as WSU’s new athletic director, four months after she became the Cougars’ interim AD and three weeks after she was promoted to the permanent position. A mother of two, McCoy’s elevation comes at a critical time for WSU, which needs someone to guide the program into a hazy new chapter nearly a year after the Pac-12 collapsed.

That responsibility now belongs to McCoy, who made a few things clear in her introductory press conference. Her top priority is securing a permanent conference home for the Cougars, who are competing as affiliate members in the Mountain West and West Coast conferences this upcoming season, and she anticipates that happening no later than July 2025.

“I think as much as the temptation would be to try to finish things or get things nailed down or just make a decision sooner rather than later,” McCoy said, “I just think that we don’t know all the variables yet. And I don’t think we have all the information we’re gonna need to make a good decision and the right decision.”

McCoy also emphasized the importance of fundraising, which previous AD Pat Chun took to “a different level,” president Kirk Schulz said. Chun may have departed for rival Washington back in March, but in McCoy, Schulz sees a successor who can keep that up.

“Raising money, everybody sometimes thinks there’s some magic piece to it,” Schulz said. “A lot of it is vision and shoe leather work, and sitting down with people, having a conversation and talking about ways mutually they can support Washington State University. And guess what – you gotta know a place to be able to do that well.”

Turns out, that was a key reason why Schulz hired McCoy, who has worked at WSU in different capacities since 2001. She knows WSU well, and she knows Pullman well, and that’s not a bad starting point.

But in McCoy, the Cougs are also getting an athletic director who draws on her personal experiences as much as her professional ones. In her rise to the top of WSU’s athletic department, from her start as an intern in Connecticut to her most recent post of senior deputy director of athletics at WSU, she has kept in mind her reason for getting into the business in the first place.

“You had a chance to be part of a student-athlete’s life from the time they came to college, when maybe they were 17 or 18 years old, to when they left when they were 22 or 23,” McCoy said. “And just really watch them grow and get to know them as people, to really feel like there’s a human connection and that you can be part of their journey.”

In that way, there isn’t much difference between Anne McCoy the WSU athletic director and Anne McCoy the mom, her kids explained. The same person who works as her kids’ personal Uber driver – “She’ll go from the hotel to the pool, back to the hotel, to food, to the hotel, to the pool and back,” son Jake said – is the same one who gets to figure out which conference the Cougs will be competing in on a permanent basis.

In fact, she proved it in the process of taking this job. Last month, after Schulz offered McCoy the job while the two were at a meeting in Vancouver, she broke the news to her family at the dining room table in their home. Jake, Taylor and husband Brian had known about the possibility for some time – Jake was the last to find out, he joked – but it wasn’t until she arrived back home that she delivered the news: She had the offer in hand.

“She was like, OK, here’s the situation. Here’s what’s going on,” Taylor said. “How do you feel about this? Because I want this to be like a family decision and something we all do together. Because we’re all one unit here.”

“She wanted to make it a family decision, to make sure that we didn’t have any concerns,” said Jake, who has committed to swim at Tennessee beginning in the fall of 2025. “I was like, concerns? You’re gonna be great at it. I know that. Her biggest thing is staying kind and I know that’s not gonna change.”

Much is changing at WSU. That much is clear, especially because McCoy said Tuesday that “just because we’re not talking about things real publicly right now doesn’t mean there’s not a lot happening.” She didn’t want to elaborate – these kinds of things happen behind closed doors in that way – but whether the Cougs end up in a rebuilt Pac-12 or another conference entirely, the woman leading the charge is the same one who can get too nervous to watch her kids swim.

“She’s usually got a ‘go TT’ for me,” Taylor said, “but then she sits there and acts like she’s gonna throw up during our races. We had a meet this past weekend, and we both had races we were very excited with and she was like, first one there afterwards, after our coach, and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so proud of you guys.’ Just our biggest supporter.”