Easop
Winston has become Washington State’s most consistent spring receiver
UPDATED:
Tue., April 10, 2018, 10:39 p.m.
Spokesman-Review/
By Theo Lawson
PULLMAN –
Easop Winston’s height isn’t a restraint, but you’ll find outside wide
receivers on Washington State’s roster much more willowy than the 5-foot-11
redshirt junior.
Winston’s
foot speed, although not a setback, isn’t something that distinguishes the
junior college transfer from the other pass-catchers vying for repetitions in
Pullman this spring.
Nor is
Winston winning his one-on-one duels with defensive backs by exerting supreme
strength at the point of contact. But he’s still winning them.
The
Cougars are through nine practices of 2018 spring camp and you’d only be able
to pick out a handful in which the City College of San Francisco transfer
hasn’t been the most productive wide receiver. The second-year player is firmly
entrenched in WSU’s wideout rotation – comprised of eight players, two at each
position (X, H, Y and Z) – and should be one solution on the outside for a team
that needs to replace the 130 balls caught last season by Tavares Martin Jr.
and Isaiah Johnson-Mack.
“I’m very
impressed with him. I like everything he does. I like his personality, I like
his tempo,” first-year outside receivers coach Steve Spurrier Jr. said. “… He’s
a guy that’ll definitely play and play a lot of snaps. He does a lot of really
good job for us offensively.”
The fact
that Winston redshirted after joining the Cougars as a JC transfer makes him a
rare breed of college football player.
Junior
college players are often brought to Division I programs for the sole purpose
of contributing right away, generally because of the physical maturity they
have over high school recruits and/or because they pick up new material at a
quicker rate.
Winston
had much of the package put together when he got to WSU last spring and he
immediately drew a ringing endorsement from standout quarterback Luke Falk, who
said the WR possessed the “softest hands” of any player he’d thrown to. But he
was never in peak physical shape and therefore Winston wound up beneath a pile
of young inside receivers who came along faster than most expected them to.
“It was a
little tough, but at the end of the day I know God has a plan for me,” Winston
said after a rain-soaked Tuesday practice at Martin Stadium. “I just took it
and ran with it. Just got better and really tried to perfect my craft last
year, and this year I can see that what I worked on last year is definitely
showing itself and evident to me on the field.”
Winston,
who’d make the switch from inside to outside receiver, finally got in shape.
But he didn’t instantly become one of WSU’s top practice players by acquiring
top-end speed or sprouting 5 inches between years one and two in Pullman.
He found
another way to stand out in head coach Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense.
“Easop’s
gotten where he’s kind of explosive out there and he gets a lot of mop-up
balls,” Leach said. “If a play breaks down or something or if he’s not the
first read, he keeps working, so he finds his way into a lot of balls and I
think when you develop that kind of reliability, then the quarterbacks find you
and they’ll look for you if they get in a bind.”
In one
instance during Tuesday’s live team period, quarterback Anthony Gordon shook off
his first read, escaped a congested pocket and found Winston on the run. The
receiver stuck the ball near the sideline, juked safety Deion Singleton and
shifted away from Dylan Axelson, sprinting into the end zone to complete a
55-yard touchdown.
Winston’s
“after-the-fact production,” as Leach terms it, has allowed him to accumulate
more spring touchdowns than any other WSU receiver. Slot receiver Kyle Sweet is
a close second, both in touchdown production and consistency.
“Something
will break down and (Winston) keeps going and he keeps going and he’ll get a
ball,” Leach said.
The
receiver credits that to his “love of the game.” But maybe it’s because he has
a selfish side, too.
“I just
want the ball in my hand at all times,” Winston said, “so if a play ever breaks
down, I’m usually that guy trying to run around, waving my hand, throwing the
mail up, trying to get any ball I can out there.
Winston
has been the preferred safety net for each of WSU’s quarterbacks this spring,
but he has a special rapport with Gordon, a former teammate at City College of
San Francisco. They made up one of the most dangerous tag teams in the Bay 6
League during the 2015 season. Gordon threw for 3,864 passing yards and 37
touchdowns. Winston caught 62 passes for 986 yards and 12 touchdowns.
That
chemistry didn’t dissipate when both players moved their college careers from
the Bay Area to the Palouse.
“He’ll
give me a look and I’ll kind of know what he wants and that’s definitely been
great for us, too, being able to come here and still have that connection that
we built at City,” Winston said.
“That was
my go-to guy at our junior college our one year,” Gordon said. “Me and him, we
have a little connection going. We give each other a little look or something,
kind of can read each others’ minds a little bit, I guess.”
………
Pac-12
Networks: Media industry report shows steep drop in subscriber fees (but don’t
hit the panic button just yet)
By JON
WILNER
San Jose
Mercury News
PUBLISHED:
April 10, 2018 at 8:57 am | UPDATED: April 11, 2018 at 7:32 am
Every so
often, we’re able to remove the shroud from the Pac-12 Networks and examine the
conference’s wholly-owned, controversial, hugely-expensive, modestly-successful
media enterprise.
The last
such instance came in September, when the Hotline acquired closely-guarded TV
ratings that showed Olympic sports broadcasts — the object of so much network
investment — were watched by friends and families and very few others.
Well,
another morsel of information has surfaced to help fill in one pixel of the
Pac-12 Networks’ financial screen.
It comes
in the form of a report by SNL Kagan, the highly-respected media research firm
that has been tracking audience data for a half-century.
The
report, obtained by the Hotline from a source (and published below), lists the
average subscriber fee for dozens of national sports networks — from ESPN to
the World Fishing Network, from the SEC Network to the Outdoor Channel.
The
numbers are hardly flattering for the Pac-12, but the issue is complicated and
requires extensive context.
Kagan’s
research shows that, in addition to its well-documented limited reach (i.e.,
households), the Pac-12 National network generates a dramatically lower average
subscriber fee than the SEC and Big Ten networks.
Perhaps
more surprising is that the Pac-12 National’s subscriber fee has dropped over
the years — and not by a few cents, either.
It has
plunged.
According
to Kagan, the Pac-12 National network received an average of $0.30 per
subscriber (coast-to-coast) when it was launched in 2012.
That
number accounts for the higher fees paid by subscribers inside the conference’s
home markets and the lower fees paid by out-of-market subscribers (i.e.,
viewers from Topeka to Bangor to Miami).
To be
clear: That tiered fee structure is standard practice for college networks. The
SEC’s subscriber fees are higher in Birmingham than Billings; the Big Ten
doesn’t command the same fee in Albuquerque as it does in Ann Arbor.
But here’s
where the situation gets interesting.
Kagan’s
research listed the average national subscriber fee in five-year increments:
* In 2012,
the Big Ten commanded $0.37 per sub, while the Pac-12 National network received
$0.30.
* By 2017,
the Big Ten’s average sub fee had jumped to $0.48, an increase of 30 percent,
while the Pac-12 fee had dropped to $0.11.
That’s
right: From $0.30 to $0.11 in the five-year span.
Of the 24
networks listed in the research report that existed in both 2012 and 2017, the
Pac-12 Network was one of only four that experienced a drop in sub fees over
the span. The others were the Olympic Channel, the Tennis Channel and beIN
Sports.
The
Pac-12’s fee decrease was, by far, the largest.
On the
surface, that would be cause for panic in the athletic departments and
presidents’ offices across the conference. But as noted at the top, the
situation requires a bit of context, and into that realm we shall dive …
After
obtaining the Kagan report, I asked the Pac-12 for an explanation. The response
came in the form of a statement:
“We do not
comment on the details of our distribution arrangements, but we can tell you
that our contracted rates increase annually, as is common in the industry, and
these reported estimates are not an accurate reflection of our economics.”
I then
went back to Kagan, whose research is used throughout the media and
entertainment industries, and asked for a response to the Pac-12’s response.
Not
surprisingly, Kagan stood by its research.
After
digging into the numbers and discussing the situation with numerous sources, I
determined that both sides could very well be right.
How could
that be?
First,
let’s parse the Pac-12 statement (italics are mine):
“We do not
comment on the details of our distribution arrangements, but we can tell you
that our contracted rates increase annually, as is common in the industry, and
these reported estimates are not an accurate reflection of our economics.”
*** Our
contracted rates:
Kagan
isn’t reporting the terms of the Pac-12 Networks’ carriage contracts. It’s
reporting the average fee for subscribers across the country.
I have no
reason to doubt the conference on the matter of its rate increases with, for
example, Comcast or Cox:
An uptick
of three or four percent annually is industry standard.
But the
average fee for subscribers coast-to-coast depends, to a certain extent, on the
breakdown of the audience:
Increase
the number of subscribers paying the lower out-of-market rate, and the average
fee drops.
*** Not an
accurate reflection of our economics:
The
conference isn’t disputing the specific Kagan estimates, it’s pivoting to the
macro level.
And here
again, I would agree. The economics are better than the plunging sub fees
indicate.
The Pac-12
Networks are stable at worst and growing, slowly but steadily, at best:
— The
number of subscribers has increase significantly, from about 12 million soon
after launch to the current tally of 19 million (Kagan’s estimate).
— Moreover,
the networks are expected to distribute $2.75 million to the campuses
(approximately) in fiscal year 2018.
So how do
we account for the apparent contradictions, for the contract increases and the
lower fees, for the added eyeballs and stable economics?
In the
fall of 2016, Dish Network expanded its agreement with the Pac-12 and moved the
National network from a sports tier to a more accessible basic tier.
(The
arrangement came soon after the Pac-12 struck a deal with Sling, which is owned
by Dish.)
By moving
to Dish’s basic tier, the Pac-12 Networks added 4.5 million out-of-market
subscribers, according to Kagan.
Millions
more out-of-market subs paying a much lower rate — estimated to be $0.05, which
is standard — had the effect of lowering the average subscriber fee.
Just as
Kagan reported.
In one
regard, it seems, the development is encouraging for the conference: The
National network gained eyeballs.
“They took
lower revenue in order to reach more homes,” said Adam Gajo, a Kagan analyst
who covers regional sports networks.
That
piece, admittedly, is a tad fuzzy:
Did the
conference drop its out-of-market rate (to $0.05 per sub) in exchange for
moving to a more widely-accessible tier on Dish?
Did it
drop the out-of-market rate in response to another development?
Did it
drop the rate at all?
(Changing
the rate for Dish would force the networks to change the rates for all
distributors, according to the terms of its carriage agreements.)
Kagan
believes the rate drop is exactly what happened:
With
millions of out-of-market subscribers added to the audience pool, and with the
lowering of out-of-market rate, the average sub fee plunged from $0.30 to the
estimated $0.11.
(If there
was an out-of-market change in the new or revised contracts, then the
conference’s claim that its contracted rates include annual increases could
still hold true: There could be increases in the revamped deals.)
Details
aside, the Kagan estimates show just how far the Pac-12 Networks lag behind
their peers at the SEC and Big Ten in subscriber fees and, in a larger sense,
how the conference might have overreached its audience in creating six regional
networks in addition to Pac-12 National.
What if
the Kagan numbers are wrong?
Well, we
should assume less than 100 percent accuracy, because 1) Kagan doesn’t have
access to the contracts and 2) the fees are presented as estimates by Kagan
itself.
But how
wrong could the estimates be? Could the drop only be to $0.25 … or to $0.20?
Is it
really all the way down to the $0.11 range.
“Kagan
takes great pride in their accuracy,” an industry source told the Hotline. “I’m
certain they would not have published a rate with such a dramatic swing if they
weren’t comfortable with it.
“It’s not
good for their business to miss that badly.”
The source
added that fee estimates typically bring a margin-for-error of five to seven
percent — and that margin increases for college sports networks because of the
complication caused by the tiered fee structure (i.e., Ann Arbor vs.
Albuquerque).
But let’s
view this hypothetically:
Even if
Kagan’s estimates for Pac-12 National are off by 25 percent — a complete whiff
— the network would still be generating an average of just $0.14 per sub.
That’s in
line with the Tennis Channel and the World Fishing Network but nowhere close to
the Big Ten or SEC networks.
To
reiterate: The fee drop doesn’t mean the Pac-12 Networks are cratering.
They
aren’t.
But the
Kagan estimates are more evidence of a lagging business … another nugget to
help fill in the pixels … to help us gain a slightly better understanding of
the finances.
After all,
the Pac-12 Networks are a nine-figure annual enterprise owned by 10 public (and
two private) universities.
Pulling
back the shroud, whenever the opportunity arises, is important.
………
New
potential downtown Pullman development sites and Welcome Park construction
revealed by Mayor Johnson
April 10,
2018 Pullman Radio News
Potential
new developments for downtown Pullman were revealed during Mayor Glenn
Johnson’s annual State of the City Address Tuesday.
Johnson
says he has heard from the owner of the old Audian Theatre and the former
Basilio’s space about possible projects for those sites. That same property owner has also expressed
interest in purchasing the Moose Lodge for a potential development.
Mayor
Johnson also stated that the new downtown Subway will be expanded. The sandwich restaurant was heavily damaged
in an arson fire last year. The new
Subway will include the space next door which used to house a barber shop. These discussions come as construction
continues on the large mixed use downtown development called Evolve on Main.
Johnson
also announced that the long planned for welcome park on Davis Way will be
constructed this Summer. Additional
private donations have been secured to pay for the project. The park will include a welcome sign in 60
different languages. Johnson hopes the
park will be done in time for this Fall’s Washington State University football
home opener.
:::::::::::
Mayor
talks bonds, downtown development
Officials
praise projects, hint at improvements yet to come during State of the City
Address
Moscow
Pullman Daily News Apr 11, 2018
With a
bevy of projects scheduled for 2018 and hints of development yet to come,
Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson's Tuesday State of City Address portrayed a city
poised to enter a new era.
With
Evolve on Main's large mixed-use facility due for completion this fall, Johnson
said the atmosphere on Pullman's Main Street is about to change radically.
"It's
going to be transformational, it really is," Johnson said. "When you
have something like this come to downtown Pullman - it's going to bring
apartments, about 85, plus retail on the bottom floor - things are going to
start happening."
Johnson
said he has heard rumblings a Spokane family who owns some of Pullman's
downtown real estate, including the old Audian Theater, is interested in
investing in revitalization.
"I'm
just going to say there are really solid prospects that may happen
downtown," Johnson said. "I can't talk about exactly what they are
right now, but, let me tell you, it's very positive."
Johnson
said the family in question reached out to Evolve on Main and is considering
potential projects. For example, Johnson said they also looked into purchasing
and renovating Pullman's Moose Lodge.
"That's
the exciting thing that's going on right now," Johnson said. "We know
people that are actually wanting to do something to help downtown."
Early in
the address, Johnson thanked Pullman voters who supported a pair of bond
propositions presented on the February ballot.
"We
had full support in November and we had even more support in February,"
Johnson said.
Proposition
No. 1 - a 20-year bond for up to $10.5 million - allowed the city to purchase a
new city hall and recreation facility; Proposition No. 2 - a 10-year, $2.4
million replacement bond - will fund upgrades for parks and paths throughout
the city.
The bonds
appeared to have initially passed in November, but they were placed on the
ballot once again in February after county officials expressed doubt about all
conditions for passage being met.
The first
proposition funded the purchase and conversion of the Encounter Ministries
campus, located at 190 SE Crestview St., into a new city hall, senior center
and recreation center.
Johnson
called the purchase a "fantastic acquisition," saying the new space
will bring much needed improvement and expansion to current city facilities.
That
proposition will also purchase property for Pullman's third fire station and
fund construction of an event center at Lawson Gardens.
Recreation
Superintendent Kurt Dahmen said the new recreation facility will be a huge
benefit to the community.
"It's
something that's been in the works for probably 20 to 25 years," Dahmen
said. "We've kept it on the radar screen, and this property presented a
unique opportunity."
Johnson
also praised the wide-ranging collaborative effort that made the Pullman-Moscow
Regional Airport Runway Realignment project a reality.
Pullman's
final contribution to the project has been made, Johnson said, and the airport
is expected to become fully operational by October of next year.
Johnson
said he is encouraged by what is happening in his city.
"Most
of you can feel the energy that's in this community right now - it is really
spectacular," Johnson said.
#
Pullman to
Boise flights possible
Airport
director, Moscow Councilor Bettge agree there is a strong demand
Moscow Pullman
Daily News April 11, 2018
Pullman-Moscow
Regional Airport Executive Director Tony Bean and Moscow City Councilors see
the importance of Pullman to Boise flights, but whether the idea will take
flight is still up in the air.
Bean said
he is scheduled to meet with Alaska Airlines officials early next month, and
services to Boise will be one of the topics discussed. He said the airport
touches base with its lone carrier around this time of year, and adding Boise
flights is always a discussion point.
Some Idaho
residents want Horizon Air to keep its flight service to Seattle and Boise at
Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport after Alaska Airlines, parent
company of Horizon Air, announced two weeks ago it will end the flights on Aug.
25, The Associated Press reported. The move will leave SkyWest's Salt Lake City
flights as the only service in Lewiston.
Bean said
there is a need to add Boise flights at the Pullman airport.
"The
largest state employer in northern Idaho is the University of Idaho, and the
connectivity for them to get to Boise is very important," Bean said.
Moscow
City Councilor Art Bettge said he and other Moscow councilors would like to see
Pullman to Boise services.
He said
the majority of passengers on Lewiston to Boise flights are from the Moscow
area.
"Clearly,
an airline has somewhat limited resources to be able to provide flights to
everywhere for everyone, but I think this is a flight that needs to connect
North Idaho with South Idaho," Bettge said.
Starting
later this year, passengers flying from Pullman to Boise will need to fly to
Seattle first, taking more time and causing a larger inconvenience, Bettge
said.
He said
Pullman to Boise flights could attract passengers from Lewiston to Coeur
d'Alene.
Bean said
he will let Alaska Airlines know the significant need to connect Palouse
residents to Boise and see if there are available options to do so. Ultimately,
the airline makes those decisions, Bean said.
Currently,
Alaska Airlines only provides service to Seattle from the Pullman airport, Bean
said. He said the airline provides four flights per day to and from Seattle
during the school year. Bean said the airline has dropped down to three flights
a day the last couple years during the summer.
He said
the airport is not trying to add more airline carriers at this time due to the
existing runway configuration and runway realignment construction taking place.
Bean said
planes are expected to be able to operate on the new runway starting Oct. 10,
2019.
When the
runway project nears completion, Bean said more discussions will be had about
adding more carriers to the airport.
"In
2019, when the runway opens, that might be a different conversation," Bean
said, "but with the existing runway, it's difficult on carriers without
certain technologies to be able to get in here."
Bean said
contractors turned in construction bids Tuesday for completion of runway
construction. He said he estimates a bid will be awarded at the next airport
board meeting April 25.
#
