For live links in the
story directly below, go to this URL:
One of the country’s top sports
economists believes that the financial struggles for WSU Athletics will likely
get worse
By Evan Ellis Pullman Radio News
3/28/2019
One of the nation’s
top sports economists believes that the financial struggle for Washington State
University Athletics will likely get worse.
Andrew Zimbalist spoke at a forum on Thursday afternoon hosted by the
WSU Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service. The forum was called “Who’s paying for
it? Financing Athletics at
WSU." Cougar Athletic Director Pat
Chun took part in the forum briefly before having to leave early due to
meetings involving his new men’s basketball coach. Chun stated that WSU Athletics has a plan to
get out of its annual budget deficit. You can listen to Chun's comment by clicking
the audio file below.
pat.mp3
Chun’s plan calls for
ending the department’s annual deficit spending in 2023 when Cougar Athletics
total accumulated debt is expected to reach about 85 million dollars. Zimbalist told the forum audience that he is skeptical
that Chun’s plan will work. You can
listen to Zimbalist's comment by clicking the audio file below.
andrew2.mp3
Zimbalist stated that
Cougar Athletics financial woes are a structural problem. He says WSU’s remoteness will always be a
disadvantage. You can listen to his
comment by clicking on the audio file below.
andrew.mp3
Zimbalist expects
Cougar Athletics financial struggles to get worse because of rising costs and
since profitable schools in the Pac-12 Conference will continue to grow their
athletics putting the Cougars further behind.
Zimbalist backed up
his argument by pointing out that Cougar Athletics has the smallest budget
among the power 5 conference schools.
That donations to WSU Athletics only accounts for about 12% of the
department’s revenue which is half the Pac-12 average. Cougar Athletics ticket revenue and revenue
from corporate sponsors are also half the conference average.
Zimbalist believes
that since its unlikely that WSU Athletics will ever be financial solvent again
the institution will have to consider if perpetual shortfalls are worth being a
member of the Pac-12.
::::::::::::
WSU makes it
official, agrees to 6-year deal with Coach Kyle Smith
By Colton Clark, Lewiston
Trib
Mar 28, 2019
San Francisco coach
Kyle Smith was signed six-year contract Wednesday at Washington State, worth
$1.4 million annually.
PULLMAN — Less than
24 hours after multiple reports surfaced suggesting San Francisco coach Kyle
Smith was in line for the head coaching vacancy of Washington State men’s
basketball, the school made it official.
Smith was put on a
six-year contract worth $1.4 million annually on Wednesday, making him the
program’s highest-ever paid coach, as announced by WSU athletic director Pat
Chun.
The Cougars’ new boss
will appear at an introductory news conference on Monday. “Kyle Smith fulfilled
all of our criteria,” Chun said. “(He) has proven a record of success, a
commitment to academic excellence and a passion for developing every aspect of his
student-athletes. The methodology he has created in building basketball
programs for sustainable excellence is like none other in the sport.”
Smith’s salary
mirrors that of former coach Ernie Kent, who was fired earlier this month after
five hapless years, in which the Cougs hung out in the cellar of Pac-12 play
(58-98 record in that span). Per his contract, WSU still has to fork over $4.2
million to Kent, spread out across three years. WSU — which predicts an
athletic department shortfall of $85 million by the end of 2023 — will ask for
$500,000 at a Thursday Board of Regents meeting, per its agenda, in order to
pay Smith. State law commands expenditures over $250,000 — not included in the
previous year’s budget — to be approved by the board.
Smith, who’s been pegged as an
analytics-minded, “Xs and Os guy” by various publications, will arrive in
Pullman coming off a 21-10 campaign at USF, in which his team defeated both Cal
and Stanford. In the years prior, Smith’s Dons twice broke the school record for
made 3s. Smith led the Dons to three consecutive 20-plus-win seasons — two
College Basketball Invitational showings — and put Ivy League Columbia on the
rebound over six previous seasons. His head coaching record stands at 164-122.
Smith noted effective recruiting tactics by Chun and WSU President Kirk Schulz,
along with a familiarity of the Cougars’ coaching history as rationale for his
decision. Plus, he’s married to a Washingtonian — his wife, Katie, attended
Manson High and even broke a State B Tournament record for single-game scoring
(50 points).
“I was really
impressed during the hiring process with Pat and his team. ... Being married to
a Washingtonian myself, it really felt like home, there was a lot of synergy in
the room,” Smith said. “To have a president like (Schulz) who’s so in tune with
athletics is very exciting and I’m ready to be a part of it.” The 49-year-old
Smith might not have any Power-Six coaching experience, but as a head man, he’s
reached four lower-level NCAA tournaments — winning the Collegeinsider.com
tournament with Columbia in ’16 — and fits the “system” coach mold Chun had
outlined as a preference. Plus, he
received a ringing endorsement from Golden State Warriors guard and former Coug
Klay Thompson earlier this week. He’ll be tasked with turning around a WSU
program that’s failed to win a Pac-12 tournament game in a decade, since Tony
Bennett was at the helm. And he’ll likely attempt the feat via his M.O.s —
tactical analytics, efficiently taken 3-pointers, a methodical attack,
defensive rebounding and limiting opponents on the perimeter.
“When I think of
Washington State basketball, I think of the great coaches that have been there,
going back to Marv Harshman, George Raveling, Kelvin Sampson and then Tony
Bennett, to name a few,” he said. “The most recent success being Tony Bennett,
who actually offered me a job when his dad left. ... I’ve followed Tony’s
career and he and I have often recruited some of the same types of players.
He’s obviously done great things and he’s always been kind of a mentor of
mine.” Smith will need to rebuild WSU practically from the ground up. Pac-12
scoring leader Robert Franks and three other seniors are gone, and juniors
Carter Skaggs and Jeff Pollard have reportedly entered the NCAA’s transfer
portal. But according to Smith’s bio for Saint Mary’s — where he assisted from
2001-10 — he played a key role in recruiting former Gaels and now-NBA players
Matthew Dellavedova and Patty Mills. He helped SMC to NCAA Tournament
appearances in 2005, ’08 and ’10.
Before then, Smith
spent time as an assistant coach at Air Force (2000-01) and San Diego
(1992-2000). Upon the announcement of his hire, the decision was lauded by NBA
personages such as Koby Altman (Cavaliers general manager), James Borrego (Hornets
head coach), Mike Brown (Warriors assistant) and David Fizdale (Knicks head
coach). NOTES — According to Idaho Press-Tribune and Cougfan.com sources, WSU
expressed interest in Boise State coach Leon Rice and Montana’s Travis Decuire.
... Todd Golden, Smith’s top assistant at USF, will reportedly become the Dons’
next coach.
::::::::::
WSU Regents approve
half a million dollar spending increase to help pay for new Cougar Men’s
Basketball Coach
by Evan Ellis ,
Pullman Radio News
The Washington State
University Regents have approved an increase to the athletics department budget
to help pay for the Cougar’s new men’s basketball coach. The half a million dollar increase in
athletics spending was unanimously approved during a special meeting Thursday
morning. The money has been approved for
the rest of the current fiscal year which ends June 30th. The funding will help finance the hiring of
Kyle Smith.
Smith was signed to a
6 year deal on Wednesday worth 1.4 million dollars annually. That makes Smith and the recently fired Ernie
Kent as the highest paid coaches in program history. WSU is still paying Kent 1.4 million dollars
for the next 3 years.
WSU President Kirk
Schulz told the regents that he is expecting that some donors will make gifts
to Cougar Athletics to help pay for the half a million dollar spending
increase. Schulz also told the regents
that details on how Cougar Athletics will finance both coaching contracts for
the next 3 years have yet to be worked out.
Cougar Athletics is
required by state law to receive regent’s approval for any increases in
spending above a quarter million dollars.
The law only applies to athletic departments at Washington’s public
colleges and universities that are running a deficit.
::::::::::::
Mike Leach’s seminar at
WSU will focus on strategy, leadership
By DALE GRUMMERT of
the Lewiston Tribune Mar 28, 2019
PULLMAN – Mike Leach
says he’s not one of those coaches who view football as an allegory of warfare.
He believes that’s insensitive to the severe realities of war.
But notions of
strategy and leadership, as they relate to both football and more serious conflict,
are among the themes of the seminar he’s co-directing, the first of whose five
sessions was scheduled for Wednesday night on the Washington State campus.
The WSU football
coach is teaming with former Washington state senator Mike Baumgartner to teach
“Insurgent Warfare and Football Strategy,” an extracurricular seminar composed
of four private sessions followed by a finale April 23 that will be
live-streamed free of charge.
“Everybody says that
football is like war — you hear people say that,” Leach said Wednesday in a
news conference regarding the seminar. “I’ve never said that, because I think
it’s disrespectful to war.
“But when it comes to
mobilizing a group of people toward a goal or a cause, and trying to utilize
all your resources to get it accomplished and maximize your capabilities, I do
think there are some similarities there, as far as how you choreograph the
whole thing.”
Baumgartner, a WSU
alumnus who is now Spokane County treasurer, said he was struck by those
similarities while teaching a class on counterinsurgency at Sciences Po
university in Paris in 2017. An ardent Cougar fan, he is also impressed by how
Leach’s teams, using his pass-laden spread offense, have frequently defeated
evidently more talented clubs. The eighth-year coach has led the Cougars to
four straight bowl berths.
“When I was teaching
that class, I started using football paradigms to sort of explain some of the
lessons,” Baumgartner said at the news conference at the WSU football
operations building.
“Insurgent
revolutionaries are essentially underdogs, and they have to turn strategic
disadvantages into advantage against more powerful, conventional opponents. And
there are a lot of parallels, from a leadership standpoint, in terms of what
Mike does with the Air Raid offense, and how he takes perhaps underdog football
players and gets higher amounts of success.
“If we can pull it
off, what we’ll do in this class is bring those things together to have a
really good student experience.”
Jim Mattis, the
former U.S. secretary of defense and a longtime Cougar fan, spoke to the team
in 2016 and came away with similar impressions about the program, according to
Baumgartner.
“I’ve spoken to
Mattis several times since then, and every time he talked about how impressed he
was with the football team, with their questions and the program,” he said. “I
remember Mattis being particularly impressed that Mike had written a book on
Geronimo. What other football coach would write a book about Geronimo?”
The seminar, which
charges no tuition and provides no academic credit, is limited to about 40 WSU
students who applied and were accepted, in part by answering an essay question
about football and another about counterinsurgency. In each session, Leach will
address football topics and mostly leave the other subject to Baumgartner, who
in 2007-08 served as an economics officer for a U.S. strategic-planning office
in Iraq.
Several guest
speakers are expected, including Craig Whiteside, an associate professor of
national security affairs for the Naval War College in California.
As a final
assignment, students will be asked to design football plays, and Baumgartner
didn’t dismiss the possibility of Leach using them. The two men, who have been
friends for several years, visited Cambodia last summer and were joined by
Baumgartner’s younger brother, a Microsoft engineer. Leach and Patrick
Baumgartner wound up designing a play together, eventually called Big Gulp,
which the Cougars employed a few times last season.
Leach offered no
promises to his students in that regard, but he did say he hoped to glean
something from the seminar: an education from the other instructors.
“I can sit and talk
football,” Leach said. “As a matter of fact, when I leave here I’m going to
talk football for two hours. But that’s easy enough. I’m kind of interested in
what the others bring and what I get to learn from that.”
#
