Drink beer, support WSU student-athletes

Coug fans can now support WSU student-athletes by drinking beer.

The Cougar Collective, a name, image and likeness organization comprised of WSU alumni with an interest in supporting student-athletes, partnered with Pike Brewing in Seattle to debut the “Ol’ Crimson Lager.”

Story/photo by Sam Taylor, Lewiston Trib, 7/16/2024

The beer is available in several businesses (many of them owned by WSU alumni), including Flatstick Pub (with locations across Seattle and one in Spokane), Marco Polo in Seattle and, as of a week ago, The Coug in Pullman, said Luke Wetzstein, a Cougar Collective board member who met his wife at The Coug.

About 25 years later, the couple was in The Coug on Monday night introducing the Ol’ Crimson Lager to Pullman.


A portion of the proceeds of each purchase of the Ol’ Crimson Lager goes back to the Cougar Collective, which uses that money to support WSU student-athletes through various NIL opportunities.

The beer is also sold in 6-packs, with the can containing art depicting Ol’ Crimson, the WSU flag synonymous with college football, appearing on every single ESPN College GameDay broadcast since 2003.


Wetzstein said the cans are available at Flatstick Pub locations and may soon be available in certain grocery stores in the state.

The Cougar Collective partnered with the Ol’ Crimson booster club for the naming and image rights and the can artwork was designed by WSU alumnus Jim Carey (no relation to the actor), Wetzstein said.

Wetzstein said he could not share how much the Collective has made so far or what percentage of the proceeds the Collective will receive because of their contract with Pike Brewing.

The beer is one more attempt at helping WSU adjust to a new age of college athletics.

Wetzstein said the Cougar Collective noticed other NIL collectives introducing beers, particularly Iowa State and Boise State.

“We’d be idiots not to do it, especially with our fan base and alumni base,” he said.


Three years after the NCAA adopted new rules, spurred by state and federal legislation, to allow student-athletes to benefit off of their name, image and likeness, the state of Washington passed Bill 5913, which amends the state’s ethics laws, allowing universities within the state to participate fully in NIL affairs up to the point allowed by the NCAA.


These new rules came into effect June 6 in Washington.

Nick Garner, WSU assistant athletic director of student-athlete experience, showed his support for the Cougar Collective by going to the event at The Coug on Monday night.

Garner said the new rules have helped the school provide “more holistic support” for student-athletes within the past month.

“Not only are we able to work more closely with the collective, but we can be much more supportive of local businesses when they want to do things, we can do much more for our student-athletes who are trying to build their brand or connect with businesses,” Garner said.

The legislation allows WSU Athletics, including individual programs and employees, to support organizations out in the open. WSU football wasted little time, posting a statement from football coach Jake Dickert and tagging Cougar Collective’s social media account with the caption “hey @CougCollective” on June 6.

“We can now publicly endorse the work that the Cougar Collective is doing to support Washington State University student-athletes. We are excited to grow this relationship as we work to deliver on the standard of excellence here at WSU,” Dickert said in a June 6 statement.

Wetzstein said this change to state law allowed the board to spend the week in Pullman and meet face-to-face with various coaches.

“We have relationships with some of the coaches, mainly football, I would say in the past, but it was more behind the scenes, off the record,” Wetzstein said. “Now it can be as public and as transparent as we need it to be. So it’s opened a lot of things up and WSU has been great in helping facilitate that.”


The Pullman launch party for the Collective’s NIL beer was one part of what WSU Athletics coined as “Cougar Collective Media Week.”

Cougar Collective board members had one-on-one meetings with various coaches, talked to student-athletes and coaches at a Sunday evening barbecue, shot video content with various stakeholders in Pullman and today, will attend athletic director Anne McCoy’s introductory news conference, Garner said.

With most of the Cougar Collective board living outside of Pullman, the chance to meet face-to-face with coaches and athletic staff members allowed the Collective to put a face to all of their efforts.

Among the faces at the Coug on Monday night were WSU alumni Rick and Kim Wood. The couple moved to Pullman last summer and volunteered to join the Collective and serve as their “boots on the ground.”

“It means a lot to feel like I’m part of the university (and part) of Pullman again,” Rick Wood said.

Before the Woods joined Cougar Collective, they operated an Airbnb in Pullman called the WSU Crimson House, and focused on renting the house out to friends and family of student-athletes, Rick Wood said.

“I’m really focused on how we can help the Collective build revenue through business ventures, as opposed to just asking you for money,” Rick Wood said.

As for the quality of the Ol’ Crimson Lager itself, Coug fans Dawn and Sean Wells described it as “A summer beer, hot day beer.”

Dawn Wells works remotely for Alaska Airlines and Sean Wells serves as Pullman’s public works director. The couple said they donate to the Cougar Collective.


“We have to be realists and understand this is how it’s going to be and we got to support our Cougs,” Dawn Wells said.

For a recent graduate like Patrick Dinges, who teaches in the Spokane public schools, buying a beer is a lot more affordable than a monthly donation.

“As a recent graduate, you know, money’s tight. So this is a really nice way for me to give back in any small way that I can,” he said.

Wetzstein said he believes there is no donation too small.

“I think WSU’s alumni base has 30-some thousand license plates in the state,” Wetzstein said “If all of those people paying for a license plate were part of the 1890 Club, we’d be in unbelievable shape.”

The 1890 Club is the Collective’s donation program, encouraging Coug fans to donate $18.90 a month in honor of the year WSU was founded.

Toward the end of the event, a majority of the WSU men’s basketball coaching staff walked down Cougar Way and stopped by the Coug.

Each member of the staff has only been in Pullman for a matter of months as coach David Riley enters his first year at the helm.

Assistant coach Donald Brady followed Riley to Pullman from their previous post at Eastern Washington and assisted with building a roster, almost from scratch, as just two players from last season’s NCAA Tournament team, Isaiah Watts and Parker Gerrits, chose to stay in Pullman.

“I think we’re competitive. Yeah, we don’t have Ohio State money or Indiana money or Alabama money, but what we do have allowed us to bring in a really solid team,” Brady said. “And obviously, the more that’s donated to the collective, the more it’s going to help the program.”

Insightful column

 Dave Boling: Washington State coaching icon George Raveling continues to offer wise advice when it comes to college athletics

By Dave Boling  Spokesman-Review 7/4/2024

College sports, having lost their way, need George Raveling more than ever.

It might require a visionary like Raveling to renew the conscience, spirit, and ideals that have gone missing.

Considering that he just turned 87, we better learn from him while we still can.

With extreme graciousness, Raveling answered a recent inquiry for a brief phone interview for background on a story about a former Washington State basketball player with whom he’d been very close.

His answers were so thorough and heartfelt, and he was going so well, that he kept weaving stories without prompt.

He talked for half an hour, and it became clear that Raveling is still an impressive orator, deep thinker, innovator, and activist. And his recollections remain strong of his years as an influential and pioneering basketball coach, as well as an international ambassador for the game.

He recounted his love for WSU and Pullman, and his biggest mistake as a coach (not landing Spokane’s John Stockton). And he gave examples of the life-long relationships that are possible when coaches and players share common space in their minds and hearts.

It was a privilege to be given his time. So, in the final minute, I asked: What’s wrong with college sports?

His answer wasn’t specific nor curative, but he saw the ways in which the environment has changed after court orders turned college athletes into professionals, with even fewer regulations.

And that’s the place to start as we review the impact George Raveling had on the game of basketball – from Pullman, Washington, to all points around the globe.

•••

“We’re teaching kids the wrong values,” Raveling said. “It’s all about money. Sports have become driven, insanely, by money. I worry about these kids when they become adults.”

Some athletes collect millions of dollars, and change schools several times, sometimes playing into their mid-20s – while the connection between athletics and academics seems abandoned.

“I coached during a time when getting an education was important. Today, you don’t even hear any academic discussions,” Raveling said, noticing that classwork seems a quaint and forgotten concept.

George Raveling stands during the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall Of Fame 2014 Class Announcement at the JW Marriott on April 6, 2015 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Getty Images)

Further, Raveling said he sees no one willing or able to step up to discover solutions.

“The biggest thing with college athletics is the same as (the problems) globally – we lack courageous leadership,” he said. “I say ‘courageous’ leadership because it takes courage to stand up and make the right decisions and advocate for the right reasons, and be willing to do the right thing at almost any cost.”

Still intellectually curious, Raveling has tried to pinpoint the core qualities of leadership, asking friends to provide lists of great contemporary leaders, not including the business arena, in which money is too-commonly used as the yardstick.

“No one has yet been able to get to five (on a list),” he said.

Raveling recalled when recruiting was not a matter of name-image-likeness financial opportunities.

“I always felt I had to have better relationships with the players,” he said. “If it’s only about winning and losing, hell, you can go anywhere. I had a responsibility to those players’ parents to be more than a coach. I felt I had to be a leader and a role model. I’m not trying to be self-serving with this, but I saw that as the responsibility of the position.”

•••

Given his retirement from coaching came 30 years ago, it’s worth retracing Raveling’s roots.

As a player, George Raveling was a sensational rebounder. He pulled down 29 in one game against Seton Hall in the 1960 season, and is still on some of Villanova’s top 10 lists more than 60 years after playing.

That should tell you a great deal about Raveling. Rebounding is a function of desire —aggressiveness directed by anticipation, fueled by a hunger for the ball. It’s an effort that takes a miss and turns it into a second chance – a theme in Raveling’s life.

Born in Washington, D.C., Raveling lost his father, a horse trainer, to a heart attack when George was 9. Soon after, his mother suffered what was labeled a “nervous breakdown” and was institutionalized. He was sent to St. Michael’s, a Catholic home for boys near Scranton, Penn.

Villanova offered Raveling a future. He responded by becoming a beast on the boards, averaging 16 per game as a junior.

In his 11 seasons as coach, George Raveling led Washington State basketball to a 167-136 record. He was named Pac-10 Conference coach of the year after the 1983 season. (The Spokesman-Review photo archive)

In a definitive Raveling story by Vince Devlin in the Spokesman-Review in 1983, Raveling recalled being the first Black basketball player to perform in West Virginia’s home gym. At one point, Raveling closed in on a Mountaineer guard breaking toward the basket with the ball.

His punishing foul at the rim laid out the opposing player. Realizing the player he had decked was All-American Jerry West, Raveling said he quickly hoped he hadn’t caused too much damage in such a hostile environment.

For him, the moment wasn’t about being a racial pioneer as much as just playing the game with the aggressiveness he felt it deserved. But it was an example of how Raveling would come to be connected with so many high-profile figures, and play a part of pivotal moments in history.

Several years later, as an assistant at Villanova, Raveling and a friend attended the 1963 March on Washington. They talked their way into duties providing security on the podium for speakers, leading Raveling to be positioned near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his “I Have a Dream” speech.

As the historic gathering cheered, King folded up his typed notes and walked toward Raveling, who asked if he could have it as a souvenir. King acceded, and Raveling held onto the historic document without mentioning it until an off-handed comment to a reporter in his first season coaching at Iowa led to its rediscovery.

Raveling turned down million-dollar offers for the three pages of the speech, and they are now displayed at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

•••

“So much of my adult life started in Pullman, Washington,” Raveling said. “Think about this, Washington State took a helluva chance when they hired me. I had no head-coaching experience.”

But as an assistant at Villanova, and then Maryland (under Lefty Driesell), Raveling had earned a reputation as a convincing recruiter. He had been the first Black assistant in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But his first two interviews for head coaching jobs ended without offers.

“I’m from the East. I’m an African-American. But Washington State took a gamble on me. Ray Nagel (athletic director) and Dr. (Glenn) Terrell (WSU president) were committed to me,” Raveling said. “My success was due to their loyalty.”

It was 1972, and Raveling was the first Black coach in the Pacific-8 Conference.

“At the time, it was the Pac-8, and of the eight coaches, 50 percent are in the Hall of Fame today,” Raveling said, adding himself to UCLA’s John Wooden, Washington’s Marv Harshman and Oregon State’s Ralph Miller.

“It was a powerhouse basketball conference in that historic framework,” Raveling said. “As good of a basketball conference as there was anywhere in the United States.”

George Raveling, who coached at both Washington State and USC, was inducted into the Pac-10 Basketball Men’s Hall of Honor in 2004. (The Spokesman-Review photo archive)

The Cougars, however, were considered one of the weaker programs. WSU had been to only one NCAA Tournament in its history, in 1941. And a scant total of three Black players had competed for the Cougars before Raveling’s arrival.

On the day he was hired, Raveling was asked about the challenges of recruiting to WSU by Spokane columnist Harry Missildine. “People who say you can’t recruit at WSU must be people who like to deal in negatives. I deal in positives,” Raveling said. “The test of a man is what he can do, not how many excuses he can give you why he can’t do it.”

Race, Raveling said, “was never, ever, an issue at Washington State.”

Raveling’s eventual success, leading the Cougars to two NCAA Tournaments, were part of his acceptance in the region, but his engaging personality was probably more important.

Guard Terry Kelly, a Gonzaga Prep product and part of Raveling’s first NCAA team in 1980, remembered his coach’s infectious personality.

“I felt Raveling’s energy, so did all the news reporters that came down. All those guys felt it; they were giddy when they were around Raveling,” Kelly said. He remembers walking with Raveling out of the gym after practice and his stopping to engage the custodian. “The way coach greeted him, he just lit up. I thought, wow, that’s the way you treat people. He was like that with everybody.”

Coach Jim Walden, in his 2005 book on Cougar football, recalled how Raveling used humor to charm boosters in the homogeneously Caucasian Palouse. Walden said Raveling told a gathering that he had heard some fans suggest they needed more “white guys” on the team, “so this year, I went out and recruited Roosevelt White and Willie White.”

Cheers and laughter. Raveling had them in his pocket.

•••

WSU and Spokane stories started coming back to Raveling, and one of his first was “the biggest mistake I ever made in coaching.”

Spokane Chevy dealer Jerry Camp, who supplied Raveling with his comp car, made only one request of the coach during his time in Pullman.

“He asked me to come up and take a look at (Gonzaga Prep’s) John Stockton,” Raveling recalled. Raveling had gotten Kelly out of G-Prep, but “for some reason, I didn’t think this (Stockton) kid from Spokane was good enough to play at the time. I wasn’t punctual about seeing him and it bothered Jerry, who called me another time. He said, ‘I never asked you to do anything before, but you’ve got to drive up and watch him’.”

About five minutes into the game, Raveling understood. He’d blown it. “I realized I made the biggest mistake of my career. I should have been up there and worked harder. He had even gone to the Cougar Cage Camp and wanted to go to Washington State. I tried to make up for it, but I think his dad thought, rightfully so, that if I really wanted him, I’d have been up there more aggressively.”

Stockton, of course, became a Hall of Fame professional player.

•••

As early as 1977, Raveling was giving off hints that college basketball might not be a broad enough environment for him.

He told Charlie Van Sickel of the Spokane Chronicle: “Many of the things that interest me the most are outside the walls of athletics. Athletics is strictly a vehicle that can move me along the road of life and help me expand as a person until I find that special area where I can make a special contribution.”

After leaving WSU, he coached three seasons at Iowa and eight more at USC. He assisted head coaches Bob Knight on the 1984 Olympic men’s team, and John Thompson on the 1988 Olympic team.

A long post-coaching career as an executive with Nike followed, as he helped build the shoe company’s basketball presence around the world.

Raveling was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.

Over 22 seasons, his teams’ win percentage was a solid .533. They never won a conference title, and advanced to the NCAAs six times, with a 2-6 record. Hall of Fame-worthy? Raveling’s records short-sell his impact.

In a story on Raveling in the Sports Business Journal in 2017, Hall-of-Fame player Charles Barkley was quoted: “Coach Rav is like my grandfather. He’s the ‘Godfather’ for all the brothers playing basketball.”

And former USA basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo added: “If ever someone could be looked upon as a world ambassador for basketball, that’s George.”

Washington State coach George Raveling talks shooting with star big man Steve Puidokas in the mid-1970s. (The Spokesman-Review photo archive)

In his Hall of Fame speech in 2015, Raveling recalled the time when, at age 13, he held a basketball and felt empowered by it.

You can picture that moment, being lifted from what seemed like a Dickensian youth, living in an open dorm with 80 other hardscrabble boys in search of identities. His future could have gone in any direction, but no one could imagine the course of Raveling’s journey.

The game would take him around the world, and allow him to influence the lives of the famed and gifted. But he continued to treat the janitors and the night watchmen with an equal respect and deference. And he repaid his debt to the game many times over with the impact he made over decades across the globe.

Yes, basketball was his vehicle. But he was always the driver. And there hasn’t been another like him.

 

Washington State President Kirk Schulz speaks out in 1-on-1

Washington State President Kirk Schulz speaks out in 1-on-1

Pac-12 rebuild timeline, Apple Cup, WSU... and his decision to retire.

By John Canzano, June 27 2024

 

= PHOTO Washington State will play in a two-member conference in 2024. (Photo: Serena Morones)

Washington State President Kirk Schulz will retire in June of 2025. The Pac-12 Conference remains in an existential crisis, tasked with a two-year rebuild. And earlier this week, Schulz promoted a long-time lieutenant to be his permanent athletic director.

I sat down with Schulz for a wide-ranging 1-on-1 conversation. We discussed his decision to retire, the future of the Pac-12, and the timeline for Washington State and Oregon State to pick a path. (Hint: Schulz is against slow-playing it.)

We also spoke about the growing power of the Big Ten and SEC, his decision to hire Anne McCoy as AD, and why Schulz wanted to continue to play the Apple Cup series against Washington.

 

CANZANO:

What went into your thinking when you decided it was time to leave Washington State and announce your retirement?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:  
I started talking with the Board of Regents a year prior to my announcement. I just kind of felt it had been enough. I think 9-10 years in a single presidency is a lot. And so in talking to my wife, my children, and everything — actually, my children, probably more so than anybody else. They were like, ‘Hey, Dad, You’ve taken your annual beating on virtually everything. Maybe it’s time for you to think about doing something else.’

I think you have those conversations with people, and you start evaluating how much longer you want to do it. I’ve always said I wanted people where I worked to say, I wish he stayed a year longer, not he stayed a year too long. I really felt that nine years was going to be about right.

I think the campus will be ready for somebody with some different perspectives. But it’s also given me enough time to allow me to do a lot of the things that I hope to be able to do and see some of the big projects through. So you add all that together, it just felt like the right time. I wanted to give the board plenty of time to do a real national search and go recruit the next candidate, not just sift through resumes because they had to do it in six months. I wanted to take a really mindful approach because, as you probably saw, the two Oregon universities have gone through some abrupt presidential changes. It’s hard to keep the momentum moving at an institution if you’re just constantly pulling one leader in and out. That stability piece I thought was really, really important as well. I’m not interested in being a president anywhere else. If I were, I’d just stay at WSU. I think after two presidencies, it’s enough, and look forward to handing the reins off to my successor and helping them be successful at WSU without interfering. That’s where I am.

 

CANZANO:

The Pac-12 had a lot of presidential turnover during the failed media rights negotiations. Oregon had two presidents and two interim presidents on the job in less than a year. Oregon State hired a new president, too. There was turnover at several other schools, too. Looking back, do you think the turnover played a role in the flow of the TV rights negotiation, or does the Pac-12 end up in the same place anyway?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

I think we probably end up in the same place anyway. You’ve written extensively about the reasons for the Pac-12 breakup and all those things. I think the hubris of a lot of the presidents on overvaluing ourselves in the marketplace did more damage to us in the last three years than anything else. But I don’t think the turnover really affected us that much.

 

CANZANO:

The President of the United States will sometimes leave a letter in the Oval Office for the successor. What would you write to your successor at Washington State? What advice would you give?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

My advice would be to dive in and get to know the people, the culture of the place, the different campuses, the state, Pacific Northwest, before making lots of decisions. I think sometimes presidents come in and feel they’ve got to show that they’re decisive in the first six months by making critical decisions. My advice is always to spend time getting to know everybody and everything. Talk to some people before jumping in and making all kinds of big decisions that you might later regret.

Your question makes me think about the advice I got from a mentor who was President of Virginia Tech years ago. It’s important for the president to have a working relationship with the men’s basketball coach and the football coach. I got that advice 15 years ago, and it’s still just as valid today as it was back then. Presidents can no longer distance themselves from the athletic enterprise the way maybe they could have 10 years ago. If a president is not willing to wade in, I think that’s going to be really tough. That would be the two things — get engaged with athletics and give yourself time to get to know a place before making decisions.

 

CANZANO:

The Big Ten and SEC are in an obvious position of power right now, particularly in college football. Mike Aresco, the recently retired American Athletic Conference commissioner, described it as “Darwinian” how those two conferences exerted their leverage during the College Football Playoff negotiations. How healthy is the SEC/Big Ten power dynamic for the college sports ecosystem?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

If I go back 10 years ago, I think we had commissioners who were seen as leaders at all the conferences. But at the end of the day, (the commissioner) would go back to the Big Ten or the SEC or the Pac-12 and there would be presidents that you would say, ‘OK, they are the real influential decision decision-makers here.’ At the end of the day, they’re going to sit down with the commissioner, and that’s the way it’s going to go.

Clearly, USC played a major role in decision-making in the Pac-12 for years. Within the Big Ten, certainly, Michigan and Ohio State traditionally have played an outsized role in decision-making in those conferences, that type of thing. I watched that shift over the last five years. Now, commissioners are really running things and they consult with presidents. Whether that’s good or not, I think, can be argued. But I do think we’re just in a different world where we’ve got commissioners running athletics and the presidents have taken a step back and frankly have been unwilling, generally, to be engaged at the level they need to until it’s too late.

Once all this stuff went down with the playoff and with the unequal distributions between the conferences and stuff like that, a few presidents are going, ‘Well, this isn't the way we want to do things.’ It’s like, where were you a year ago?!? And so I really think that we’ve watched that shift.

If you look at the last decade in terms of football and who has won national championships, part of the lack of competitiveness from some of the other conferences contributed a lot to the Big Ten and the SEC. We saw a rise in terms of television rights and how many people want to watch Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State play football every Saturday vs. Pac-12 schools or Big 12 schools. I think the lack of other schools winning national championships also contributed to the fact that you’ve really got two leagues that are winning all of them, and getting the best players. Until somebody can break into that club, I think we’re going to continue to see this disproportionate functionality between the conferences.

 

CANZANO:

Do you think the growing gap can be bridged?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

The question becomes what fans do and how the fans react. Over time, I think if I went to a particular school and we won a bunch of championships, you might say, ‘Hey, this is the greatest thing ever.’ Well, everybody else goes, ‘Well, no, it’s not. We want our opportunity.’

Do we get 10 years down the road and we’ve seen four different schools — and that’s it — win a football national championship? Or do we see others that break in there, win a national championship, and you start seeing a little a bit more parity? It’s been hard for Washington State for decades to compete against Ohio State or Texas in terms of budget and those things. I worry about those gaps continuing to get so large that you worry if you ever have a chance of fielding that special team like the Cougar Rose Bowl team? Or the Gardner Minshew team we had a few years ago, where everything aligns for you in a season and you go out there and you have a great year? We worry if there will be stories that capture America and sports fans everywhere? Or is it the same schools winning every year all the time?

I’m hopeful and optimistic that we will see the Cinderella stories continue to be there, but I just think it’s going to become more and more difficult as the money becomes an even greater influence than it has been in the last 20 years.

 

=PHOTO Gardner Minshew and Mike Leach on the Pac-12 Network set.

 

CANZANO:

The Pac-12 has options: A) rebuild the conference to an NCAA minimum of eight teams; or B) root for chaos in the ecosystem and try to benefit from another round of realignment; or C) merge with another conference. How do you approach that intersection? Especially with one year to go in your tenure.

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

Yeah, John, we’re looking at all of the above. I think if you said, ‘Kirk, have you red-lined any of the options right now — any realistic option?’ Let me put it that way, I would say no… right now, our perspective is to keep ourselves flexible, make sure we don’t tie ourselves to something too quickly, whatever that may look like, and do an assessment then of the different options… to figure out which one seems politically the best as well as the one that’s going to provide Washington State with the best ability to compete and win conference championships.

I’m very committed to ensuring that we have a really great Division I conference — an all-sports conference — on the West Coast. I know some of the premier schools are in Midwest-based or East Coast-based conferences. But at the end of the day, I think the West Coast is going to want a premier conference. Now, does that look like some merger or whatever? I don’t know yet. But I do think that’s still really important to me and I think it’s important to some of my colleagues on the West Coast.

As you can imagine, lots of egos get in the way. We’ve got to be really careful about how we message. I think when we came out of the gate a year ago, there was a little bit of, ‘Hey, we’re just going to go cherry-pick whatever schools we want and everybody’s going to come running.’ I think we found out that we were behaving in a way that people said, ‘Hey, what was just done to you two schools… now you’re talking about doing the same to everybody else and it’s OK?!?’ I think we took a step backward and said, ‘Hey, let’s talk about maybe partnerships instead of acquisition.’

 

CANZANO:

What does the timeline for the Pac-12 look like in your mind?

 

I feel that in my conversations with (President) Jayathi Murthy at Oregon State, I think early in 2025, we’ve got to make a decision about where we’re going to be for the next four or five years. I don’t think we can continue having a foot in multiple conferences and hoping that something’s going to come our way. So I think we’re going to spend the fall planning, looking at our best options. And I think January-February, we’ve got to pick what we think is the best and aggressively move forward.

 

CANZANO:

So that’s where we are in the timeline.

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

I know that supposedly we have more time than that with the NCAA and those things, but if we’re not careful, we’re going to keep kicking the can down the road. It’ll hurt recruiting, hurt coach retention, hurt our student-athletes. They want to know who they’re going to be competing against. And so that’s the timeline, at least I feel, is important for us to hold to.

 

CANZANO:

I’ve written a lot about the $255 million war chest available to the two Pac-12 schools. I’m curious how you’ll use the money. Will you subsidize what media-rights money you would have normally received as a Power 5 member? Will you set aside money for exit fees, acquisitions, or “partnerships” as you call it?

You know, I think a little bit of that’s still up in the air, John. We reduced our athletics budget this last year by about $10 million to $11 million. And that is painful as hell. We let people go who worked for us for 30 years. I mean, it was not an easy set of decisions to make. The reason I bring that up is you’ve got really two choices here. You can say we’re going to use some of those dollars, the majority of those dollars, to ensure that Washington State and Oregon State get the same (TV distributions) we would have gotten from media rights and not 20 percent of what we would have gotten from media rights. I think at least for the next two years, we’re looking at the conference providing a reasonable subsidy coming back to each institution from that war chest to help us preserve our competitive budget and … give ourselves time for that last question about where are we going to be and what that’s going to look like.

I think that has been the approach much, much more so than, ‘Hey, let's sit on a huge bunch of money that we're going to go use to buy schools.’

I think cutting our athletic budget by $30 million so we can go buy somebody else, I think what would happen is people would say, ‘Well, Kirk, that’s great, but you just gutted us forever. Maybe that was too hasty a decision.’ So I know everybody looks and says, ‘Oh, you got all this money.’ But if you start looking at the media for the two schools over a couple of years, some of the legal stuff coming down the road, the need to keep a small conference office there, fees that we do have to pay to the Mountain West and other places to participate, you can burn through it pretty quickly. And we just want to make sure that we’re preserving some of those dollars for the future, but that we’re maintaining as much as possible the excellence we have in our programs right now.

 

=PHOTO WSU president Kirk Schulz, right, shakes hands with Oregon State AD Scott Barnes during the Pac-12 court hearing. (Photo: Geoff Crimmins)

 

CANZANO:

How important is it for the Pac-12 to stay nimble or lean in terms of the number of future conference members? Scott Barnes, the athletic director at Oregon State, told me he thought the number of teams should be on the right around eight or so. Is that strategy still in play, or is that to be determined as you sort things out?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

I think there’s no question that we’re going to try and keep as nimble as possible. And I think you’ve written about this in the past. I mean, we’re watching what happens on the East Coast with the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Clemson and Florida State, lawsuits. And it, unfortunately, feels an awful lot like what the Pac-12 was going through two years ago when USA and UCLA left. And to me, that was really the beginning of the unraveling. And so I think if the ACC were to remain intact with the same number of schools they presently have, I think that probably shuts down some options. I think if there is some change in what their league membership looks like that’s significant, that also may represent opportunities. And I think our fans would say, ‘Kirk, don't tie us into something when you don't know what’s happening with one of the other major Power Four conferences.’ And we just think in the next six months, by the end of football season, whatever is going to happen (in the ACC) is going to happen. I think being flexible gives us the opportunity to look at what we might be doing on the West Coast.

 

CANZANO:

Anne McCoy was promoted to be your athletic director this week. She goes from interim AD to permanent. What did you see that made you say she’s the pick?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

When I called Anne originally to ask her to serve as interim, I expected she knew budget cuts were looming. We had a couple of coach openings. I expected to have to do a very hard sell about why I thought she was the right person. And she came back and said, ‘Hey, I love this place. I've been here for more than 20 years, and I believe I’m the right leader at the right time to take us forward.’ And so she almost went into sales mode with me on the phone.

It was maybe the biggest recruiting call I’ve ever done. It was 10 minutes long, and we had an agreement, and she was off to the races. I had people, John, on campus, who stopped me in elevators that I had never met. They would say, ‘Hey, look, you got the right person as athletic director. You need to pull interim off her name.’ I got that for three months, just different people within athletics. I started getting a lot more of that from donors in the last month who had a chance to sit down and meet with her. I heard that from the faculty and other people.

But I still think I wanted Anne to have the opportunity to show the Cougar Nation what she could do… she’s had an eventful three months, and I think managed it really well with a very level head… I had somebody on my staff who said, ‘Hey, Kirk, don't you dare put Anne in let her do all the tough work, and then go hire somebody from the outside that comes in after somebody’s made the really hard decisions.’ And I thought that was just a really good piece of advice.

About two weeks ago, I sat down with Anne and said, I think I would love for you to serve as our permanent AD. And so then we went through the process of just finishing up her paperwork and stuff like that. She is the right person at the right time for WSU moving forward. She has a lot of internal and external support, and I just think that's really important for us right now.

The Apple Cup will continue to be played in football. You guys have agreed to play Washington in a five-year extension of that rivalry series. How important is that series to Washington State?

 

=PHOTO Washington State will play Washington on Sept. 14 next season. (Photo: Tim Healy)

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

It’s hugely important. I know after everything broke up, we had some segment of our fans that had no desire for us to ever play the University of Washington again. But I will tell you, John, from my experience when I was in the Big 12 and we watched Texas and Texas A&M go different directions, and Missouri, and Kansas, and these others... everybody was angry after a year But two or three years later, people are like, ‘Man, I miss those rivalries. That used to be such a big deal for us.’

So my experience of having gone through that and recognizing that, ‘Hey, realignment sucks, nobody likes it, but let’s not lose some of those long-term rivalries.’ I appreciate the fact that the University of Washington also came to it from that same perspective. That it was important in the state for the two large Division I football-playing schools to continue to play each other. So I think it’s going to be important to our fans. I think it’s fun in the state when those things happen.

You’ve covered sports in Oregon and Washington and other places for years. People get amped up that week, even if the game or teams aren't as competitive as everyone wants. Sometimes people get excited in the offices. Everybody takes a side during that week. I think for us, being able to play in a neutral site in Seattle with a huge population in Washington that lives in that area along that I-5 corridor, it’s a real opportunity for both programs, frankly, to showcase what they're going to be this next year. So is there some part of our fan base that was like, ‘Screw UW’? Absolutely. That part will still be there. At the end of the day, our fans and our athletes, and our coaches want to do this. I think it’s important for us to continue to meet annually and celebrate the rivalry and make sure that different conference affiliations don’t mean that those things go away.

 

CANZANO:

I’m a deadline person. It’s the business I work in. You've got a one-year deadline right now until you retire. How does that feel? Are you at a point where you’re having to make some decisions about the things you really want to get done in the next year, or will that come with three months to go in the tenure?

 

KIRK SCHULZ:

I’ve got three or four things that were really critical for me. One was enrollment stabilization at WSU. I think that’s around the corner for us. We’re in the middle of a major fundraising campaign for WSU and we’ve got lots of positive momentum four years in. What I want to do is hand off to my successor that same fundraising momentum and excitement. The Pac-12 Conference and Cougar Athletics, I want to hand to the next person, ‘OK, here’s where we‘re going to be the next five years.’

I do not want a brand new president to come in and have to navigate that as much as possible. If I look at it, those are probably the things that I want to really focus on and spend my time on this next year. No, I do have three or four things, but it’s not 10… but if I can get those things across the finish line, and hand the baton off, I’ll feel really good about the transition.

 

CANZANO:

Thank you for reading. I appreciate all who support, subscribe, and share this independent endeavor with friends and family. If you haven’t already — please consider subscribing and/or gifting a subscription to someone who would enjoy it.

Contact: https://www.johncanzano.com

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TERRY KELLY: An architect of Spokane’s Hooptown to join Hooptown USA Hall of Fame; He’s a former WSU and G-Prep basketball star

By Dave Boling, Spokesman-Review, June 22, 2024

Hooptown USA is not a recognized geographical area.

The closest official name reported by the U.S. Census Bureau is Hooktown, Kentucky, and given the fixation on basketball in that region, there might be similarities. And there’s a Hooper, Colorado, but with a population of 81, it’s barely a Hoop hamlet.

To be clear, Hooptown USA has no city limits or zoning restrictions, being a vague sphere of collective passion for basketball.

So, it doesn’t need a mythical mayor. But how about some recognition of a founder, the pioneer who first proved that basketball was a valuable resource that could be mined in the area?

Any fair debate on that topic would include Terry Kelly.

Spokane and surrounding communities were largely ignored by college recruiters until Kelly began drawing attention as a 1976 first-team all-stater at Gonzaga Prep who led the state in scoring with more than 26 points a game.

Kelly signed with coach George Raveling at Washington State and was captain of the 1980 team, the first group of Cougars to make it to the NCAA Tournament in 39 years.

“Terry opened things up in Spokane,” the 86-year-old Raveling said by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “A lot of times in life we need an example of something before we become true believers. Terry was the validation that, yes, there are kids in Spokane who can play in the big time.”

Kelly’s ability to play at the Pacific-8/10 Conference level was more than a validation to recruiters, it also inspired a generation of young players who suddenly had a paradigm to emulate.

Spokane author Jess Walter, a friend of Kelly’s and a lifelong citizen of what would become Hooptown, recalled the influence Kelly had on the courts and playgrounds across the area: “Growing up in Spokane, we all tried to shoot that perfect Terry Kelly jump shot.”

After his playing days, Kelly was a member of the founding board of Hoopfest, the world’s largest 3-on-3 outdoor tournament. For these reasons, Kelly will be inducted this week into the Hooptown USA Hall of Fame. As further evidence of Kelly’s multigenerational influence, his son, Parker, a former Eastern Washington player, is a five-time Elite Division Hoopfest champion.

Terry Kelly, now 66 and the general counsel for Washington State University Foundation, was a child prodigy. In the eighth grade at Our Lady of Fatima Elementary, Kelly scored a miraculous 51 of his team’s 56 points in a game with 6-minute quarters.

He went on to lead the Gonzaga Prep Bullpups to third place in the State AAA Tournament.

“When I was at Gonzaga Prep, nobody cared about basketball; it was a football school,” Kelly said. “But by my senior year, everybody cared about basketball.”

Kelly was offered a ride at Gonzaga, but he liked Raveling, and the challenge of playing against powerhouses like UCLA lured him to Pullman.

“The people of the Palouse, I remember it so vividly, how much they appreciated that we were winning,” Kelly said. “They loved the idea that they had a Spokane guy playing a prominent role on that team.”

With Donald Collins as the 1980 Pac-10 Player of the Year, Raveling’s Cougars were filling Beasley Coliseum with newly energized fans. And on a weekend in late January, the Cougs swept the L.A. schools (77-57 over USC, and 80-64 over UCLA).

The win over the Bruins snapped a streak of 27 consecutive losses to them, and lifted the Cougars to their first national ranking since 1950.

Yes, Collins scored 31 in that win, but Kelly also hit 6 of 9 shots for 19 points.

Finishing 22-6, the Cougars were rewarded with a No. 5 NCAA seed and appeared heavily favored against 10th-seeded Penn. They owned a 10-point lead in the second half, but Collins fouled out late and the Quakers rallied for the upset.

Kelly was team captain and started 80 straight games, but said he still recalls a late shot that he missed in that Penn game.

“We had an extremely disappointing ending in the loss … that’s been difficult to look past,” Kelly said. “But people never forgot what we were able to accomplish.”

If the as-yet unrecognized region of Hooptown needed the perfect paradigm for subsequent hoopers, it was the multidimensional Kelly.

“Terry was the essence of the student-athlete,” Raveling said. “I’ve coached a lot of athletes, but I’ve only coached one or two who embodied all the characteristics of a student-athlete, which encompasses the classroom, the community, the games, their behavior. He might be my favorite student-athlete ever.”

Raveling, a hall of fame coach and two-time U.S. Olympic staff assistant, coached or influenced players around the world – even after coaching, serving as director of international basketball for Nike.

In those capacities, he’s been close to many of the great players in basketball history. But when he was announced as a winner of the Lapchick Character Award in 2013, Raveling selected Kelly to introduce him at the award ceremony.

The coach and player, bonded by a powerful mutual respect, have stayed in touch through the decades.

“There was nobody like him,” Raveling said. “And that’s phenomenal to say because I’ve coached guys like Michael Jordan on down, and ended up being life-long friends with Michael to this day, but there are people in your life where there’s nobody else in your relationship circle like them … and that was Terry Kelly.”

Kelly objected to those who claimed Raveling was successful more as a recruiter than basketball tactician.

“He was what a first-class person is all about; his work ethic, his passion and enthusiasm he brought to whatever he was doing,” Kelly said of Raveling. “He made it so much fun.”

The legacy Kelly passed on to Hooptown successors was sometimes, actually, physically passed along.

Throughout his playing career at WSU, Kelly used to return to work the Gonzaga Prep basketball camp in the summers. The first year, a somewhat frail but feisty freshman approached Kelly with an unprecedented request. He wanted to take on Kelly in a 1-on-1 game. Kelly acceded. Each summer thereafter, the young player challenged him again.

“By the senior year, he was making me work,” Kelly said.

The aspirational – audacious – young guard was John Stockton.

“He was a late bloomer, but his improvement was significant,” Kelly said. “Nobody had ever done that with me, but you could see that he was measuring where he needed to be.”

Kelly has heard Stockton cite him as an early influence, “which means a great deal, to have a player of his stature saying that.”

Kelly was initially skeptical about the idea of the Hoopfest event, which has taken over the summer streets of Spokane with as many as 6,000 teams entered.

“I said, ‘I don’t know how much Spokane will support this, but I’m all in because I love basketball and I think it would be great.’ And then I was on the board for 26 years,” he said.

Kelly excelled in everything, with a near-perfect GPA and an honors law degree; a successful legal career, and a low golf handicap.

Yet, when mentioning Kelly to half a dozen potential sources, the first thing they all had to say was something along these lines: “What a great guy, such a nice man.”

Mark Rypien, MVP of Super Bowl XXVI , recalled listening to games and watching Kelly at Prep. “He would get a step or two over halfcourt and start shooting jump shots,” Rypien said. “Seeing him play was something special.”

Now long-time friends and golf buddies, Rypien called Kelly, “an amazing guy, and more importantly, a good human. He’s got a great moral compass, and is a treasure for Spokane and our community.”

Kelly’s character surely boosted his professional career.

“I think that’s a lot of folks just being kind,” Kelly said when told of the praise he’d drawn from sources. “I think clients recognized that I was honest and authentic with them, that I would go to bat for them, and they could sense that as a strength.”

He wondered if having to cope with athletic successes and failures along the way was crucial in shaping his personality. “I think I remember the losses and misses more than anything else, but that builds a compassion and empathy that I wouldn’t have.”

Maybe the Spokane area would have become the USA’s nominal Hooptown without Kelly’s pioneering influence, but from the perspective of college basketball recruiters, he unquestionably put it on the map.

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Football promotional event on July 10, 2024, with WSU Coach Jake Dickert, who lives in Pullman, and OSU Coach Trent Bray, who grew up in Pullman

Pac-12 eyes Las Vegas for football meet-up: The two-member conference will piggyback on Big 12 and MWC events.

This is part of a June 13, 2024, column by John Canzano

It turns out the Pac-12 Conference is blowing off one of my wild ideas. I’d suggested the “Conference of Champions” should reach back to its long-ago roots for football media day and hold the annual event in downtown Portland this summer.

The folks at Hotel Lucia — formerly the Imperial Hotel — were delighted to read my column on the subject. I received a note from Stephen Galvan, the director of sales at the hotel property. Galvan wrote: “Hosting the event at the original 1915 birthplace of the conference would surely garner a favorable and beneficial position for the Pac-12 as it prepares for its 2024 season.”

The Pac-12 is instead going to Las Vegas on July 10 and holding a more casual event. I’ll have more details soon, but I’m told it’s not an official media day. It’s a small gathering featuring Washington State coach Jake Dickert, Oregon State’s Trent Bray, a couple of players from each team, and some media members.

Commissioner Teresa Gould is also expected to attend. I’m told by a source that the event is more of a conversation than a traditional media day. The schools will also hold separate events with local media on their campuses.

,,,,

Going back to the hotel in Portland where the conference was founded 108 years ago wasn’t the worst idea I’ve ever floated in this space. But it’s not going to happen this year. I’m not taking the snub personally, but if you know the folks at Hotel Lucia, loop them in.

If the Pac-12’s media meet-up comes together in Las Vegas on July 10, it will piggyback on the Big 12 and Mountain West Conference football media days. That Wednesday (July 10) happens to be the final day of the Big 12’s two-day football media day at Allegiant Stadium and the first day of the MWC’s two-day media event at Circa Resort and Casino.

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