It’s funny what expectations do to us as fans.

By any objective measure, WSU was more or less blown off the field last week by Syracuse in the Holiday Bowl. Yes, there was that brief 21-14 lead late in the first quarter, thanks to a punt block that turned into a scoop and score, giving all of us some fleeting hope that maybe — just maybe! — the depleted Cougars could figure out a way to stun a team that might have been overlooking a wounded animal.

The Orange then proceeded to reel off 38 points in their next seven possessions while the Cougs could muster only a lone TD, putting the game far out of reach by the time WSU got in the end zone in the final seconds against Syracuse’s reserves.

And yet, it didn’t feel as bad as what I just described, largely (I think) because — unlike past years’ bowl games — we didn’t expect a whole lot going in, thanks to the departure of the head coach and the two dozen or so players who followed him out the door. If you were anything like me, you were simply hoping for the game to not be embarrassing.

WSU certainly met that modest bar; the game was competitive for a time, and the Cougs managed to score 35 points — more points than the school had scored in any of its seven bowl games since 2013.¹ I think you can largely attribute that to the guys who stuck around for the game simply playing their asses off for each other, something that was palpable even through the TV screen. I honestly can’t recall a time I’ve ever been so proud to be associated with a 17-point loss.

I think I can probably say something similar about WSU hiring an FCS coach to fill its head coaching vacancy.

Under normal circumstances, I’d have considered dipping into the lower division for this job to be a form of dumpster diving. But, of course, normal circumstances ceased to exist a year and a half ago, which means I’m now utterly thrilled to be landing Jimmy Rogers from South Dakota State.

WSU heads into this offseason with a depleted roster in advance of one final season of purgatory before entering the new Pac-(whatever), and the most pressing matter is how to get through the next year and a half without the program descending into a death spiral it’s never able to pull out of. To that end, I said last week that it was important for WSU to hire someone with head coach experience, someone who has been able to build his own program; that’s certainly who AD Anne McCoy went and got, although his experience on that front is somewhat limited — and narrow.

I won’t take you through an exhaustive breakdown of Rogers’ bio — if you’re so inclined, you can catch up on that with the school’s press release or at Cougfan via friend of the pod Jamey Vinnick. I’ll just point out what I think are the three most relevant items on Rogers’ resume:

1. He was wildly successful as the head coach at South Dakota State, going 27-3 with an FCS championship in 2023.

2. At 37 years old, he’s only been a head coach for two years.

3. He has spent 18 of the last 20 years as part of South Dakota State’s program — first as a player, then as a position coach, then as co-defensive coordinator, then as defensive coordinator, and finally as the head coach.

If you’re inclined to be optimistic, you’re latching onto that first fact, and holding onto it tightly. That’s a ridiculous record for anyone in a two-year span, regardless of age or experience.

If you’re inclined to be pessimistic … well, there are reasons for skepticism. SDSU has been one of the better FCS programs for 15 years, finally reaching powerhouse status in the last five. The Jackrabbits won two FCS titles in the three years preceding Rogers’ appointment to the top spot. Now, he played a big hand in that. But still, he took over the defending national champs, getting behind the wheel of a bull dozer and keeping it on the road to win another championship.

I’m not trying to take away from what he did, which was incredible independent of circumstances. And if the reaction of SDSU fans is any indication, they were thrilled with what he did in taking over for John Stiegelmeier and are devastated to lose him, which speaks to his talent as a coach. Mostly, I’m just pointing this out as a contrast to the situation he inherits at WSU, which could be about as close to a near-total rebuild as you’ll find in college football. There’s zero proof of concept for such a circumstance on Rogers’ resume.

That obviously wasn’t disqualifying in McCoy’s eyes. Nor should it have been. Hiring a head football coach is risky even when you’re Alabama or USC or Texas A&M or LSU, and that risk is exponentially multiplied at a place like WSU, where budget constraints and program attractiveness considerably limits the pool of candidates. Whoever WSU hires, whether it’s in 2024 or 1994 or 1974 is going to come with major question marks; in the school’s history, they’ve hired exactly one head coach — ONE! — whose football resume was unimpeachable. But even in that case, Mike Leach had his own set of issues that made him available to WSU in the first place.²

The truth is that WSU always has to decide which risks they’re comfortable with accepting. And in Rogers’ case, the risks are certainly in the acceptable realm. Yes, I would have liked someone who has a longer track record of running their own program — one full recruiting cycle, at least — but you could also make a compelling case that Rogers was right there as a major part of SDSU’s program building under Stiegelmeier and knows exactly how to do it.

But that also points to what I think is the most concerning thing: Rogers has only been outside the SDSU ecosystem for two of the last 20 years, and not at all in the last decade. Young coaches already face a challenge in building their staffs based off nothing more than their limited experience … will that be doubly problematic for a guy who hasn’t worked with a ton of people across a number of programs? There’s already reporting indicating that Rogers intends to bring a bunch of SDSU coaches with him, which you would expect; we also have a semi-recent example of how an FCS coach bringing a ton of guys from an FCS school can go very, very badly.

Is it fair to compare Rogers to Paul Wulff? Perhaps not, given that Rogers reached heights at SDSU that Wulff didn’t at Eastern Washington, but it’s still worth considering.

Something I think is definitely not fair is critiquing the hire based off nothing more than what WSU will be paying him. Initial reports are that Rogers will be paid an average of $1.57 million³ over the course of a five-year contract. That per annum amount is roughly a million dollars less than what Jake Dickert was being paid, and it puts Rogers squarely in the middle of Pac-(whatever)-level coaches.

Some would read that as a lack of investment in football by the school. I think that’s pretty damn disingenuous. Let’s say WSU was shopping the same salary that Dickert was making, which would put the coach near the top of the Pac-(whatever). Who are they getting with that extra million that’s a clear upgrade on what you’re getting with Rogers? Who out there is providing an extra million dollars of value for that extra million dollars spent?

If McCoy was looking exclusively for someone with head coaching experience (and there are indications that she was), is WSU better off paying an extra $1 million to $1.5 million a year to convince a sitting FBS coach to move? Which one is that going to get you — Jim Mora? Or would you rather pony up an extra $2 million for a retread, like UNLV did for Dan Mullen?

Or, to be even a little more absurd: Should WSU have paid Rogers more just so that it looks like we care a little more?

I remain completely unconvinced that any of those scenarios is a better allocation of WSU’s limited resources than paying the going rate for a successful FCS coach jumping up to a Group of 5 job, independent of all the other financial issues swirling around WSU athletics. This is a perfectly defensible hire at a perfectly sensible price point that has a heck of a lot of upside.

Now, we turn to rebuilding the roster. Early indications are that a bunch of players might be following Rogers from SDSU, perhaps including quarterback Mark Gronowski, the winner of the 2023 Walter Payton Award (FCS equivalent of the Heisman Trophy). While that might be concerning to some, I think we have some very recent precedent to how that can work.

David Riley brought his top four players from Eastern to WSU and augmented them with transfers and high school recruits. The result was a team that looked like it could push for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament (before it was decimated by a series of fluke injuries). I’ll readily acknowledge that football is different for a variety of reasons, but I think Rogers could quickly build a competitive roster by adding a dozen or so of his best players to the existing roster in Pullman and then supplementing that with transfers.

Gronowski — who entered the portal after Rogers was hired — is likely the linchpin to how well it works. He’s very, very good. And if he decides to bypass the NFL Draft, there’s an excellent chance he comes to WSU, meaning there’s an excellent chance WSU gets as good of play from the QB spot next year as it did this year … and maybe even better. With apologies to Zevi Eckhaus, WSU’s ceiling next year likely rides on Gronowski’s decision.

In the meantime, be patient with the process of building this roster back up. In the next few weeks, some WSU guys currently in the portal probably will come back, while some guys from South Dakota State will probably portal in. In February, some high school players who were underrecruited for whatever reason, or got left in the cold by a different coaching change, will sign. And then once spring rolls around, WSU will probably add pieces here and there when the transfer portal opens again. It’s going to be a trickle of news for months, which shouldn’t overly concern you.

It’s all about managing expectations.

With that, let’s turn back to the bowl game for some final thoughts about the 2024 season …

What We Liked: Fighting until the end

The situation in which WSU found itself can go one of two ways heading into a bowl game. Thankfully, the Cougars went the “fight like hell” direction rather than the “roll over and quit” direction. All the credit in the world goes to all the players for that one. I know it sounds corny, but what these guys accomplished together with one last ride is the sort of thing they’ll remember fondly as they age — and it’s something that the guys who bailed will never know.

To that end, I want to highlight one guy in particular: Kyle Thornton. The Holiday Bowl marked the final game of his six(!) years in Pullman. In a world where players’ transience is taken as a given, he’s a true Coug through and through: Recruited as a preferred walk-on by Leach, awarded a scholarship by Nick Rolovich, and finally made team captain by Dickert. That man has seen it all.

I’m thrilled for Thornton and the rest of the guys who stuck around got to finish on their own terms. I’m also thrilled that all the dopes out there who were using their social media megaphones to say we should have just withdrawn from the game ended up looking very dumb in the end.

In a season where the results ended so badly, I’ll actually remember this game fondly.

Who Impressed: Kyle Williams

Another thing I’ll remember fondly is watching Williams catch the football. What a fun player he turned out to be after transferring from UNLV, providing so many highlights this season that I honestly can’t even remember them all.

I guess I’ll just have to settle for this one:

He finished the game with 10 catches, 172 yards, and that TD — perhaps showing what might have been possible had the former offensive coordinator actually targeted Williams to the degree his talent suggested someone should.

I have no idea if Williams will play in the NFL; I’m pretty bad at predicting that sort of thing. But he absolutely looks like a guy who can do that, and he’ll undoubtedly get a shot to prove he belongs.

Thanks for the memories, KW.

What Needs Work: Defensive line

With David Gusta hurt and Ansel Din-Mbuh transferred, the defensive tackle duties were left to backup DT Caleb Lamb and a pair of hastily converted defensive ends in Andrew Edson (253 pounds) and Nusi Malani (265 pounds). God bless them for giving it a go on the interior, but they never really stood a chance against Syracuse’s rushing attack, which was completely intact from the regular season.

I’m not upset about how it turned out, but it really does expose just how (negligently?) thin WSU got up front on defense under Dickert’s watch. Rogers is going to simply need to find some competent bodies, which I understand is easier said than done — everyone is looking for linemen on both sides, and it’s not exactly in WSU’s budget to buy them in the open market like other schools do.

Up Next

See you at the spring game in April!

1  Still too soon?

2  Did Leach end up avoiding the pitfalls that got him run out of Lubbock? Yes. Did he almost meet that same fate after just one season at WSU? Also yes! In the glow of everything he accomplished, a lot of people forget about the ways in which that first season teetered on the brink of disaster …

3  I think the word “average” is key here, by the way. I’m guessing the salary starts much lower — maybe about $1 million this year? — and escalates with the expected cash infusion from the new Pac-(whatever) media rights deal. I think that’s a win-win for everyone: Even at the lower initial number, Rogers is tripling his salary; WSU saves some cash early during a budget crunch (or diverts it to the assistant pool); and if he’s wildly successful and gets hired away after a few years, WSU is saved from the highest payouts. Sounds savvy to me.