Cougars endure a long, hot — and dry — summer

PULLMAN — Stop me if you've heard this one: A school does away with its old football coach, a new one comes aboard, and suddenly, everybody can't say enough about how much better things are.

Things are more intense, everybody bench-presses an Escalade and runs like Tyson Gay, and the system fits the players now.

A long time ago, I covered a program that changed coaches. The undisciplined guy got fired and the new one became known for making everybody toe the line. The team got very good at picking up stray Coke cups, but won nine games in three years, and soon, the replacement, too, was gone.

Have to admit, though, that some Washington State seniors took me aback the other day after a walk-through at Martin Stadium. They're in the middle of fall camp, the definition of drudgery, but it probably seems like a couple of weeks in Jamaica compared to what they did this summer.

The Cougars, 100 or so of them, didn't have a beer for more than six weeks. Not to belabor the WSU/drinking cliche, but this is like getting a hundred fans in Philadelphia to give up booing.

Actually, the whole thing started in January, when the Cougars began winter conditioning under coach Paul Wulff. They had some diabolical circuit drills in their indoor facility that began to establish the peer pressure Wulff is trying to inculcate here.

There were the usual sights — players losing breakfasts in trash cans — but there was also a grading system. Essentially, if you showed a championship effort, you got to wear a crimson jersey at the next workout. A middling performance got you a white jersey.

A lousy showing? You wore purple. Purple, the hue of choice 300 miles west of Pullman.

"You won't catch any of us wearing purple," said Dan Rowlands, a senior offensive lineman.

Other indiscretions could earn you purple — missing a tutoring session or wearing earrings to practice. Running backs coach Steve Broussard left an earring in one day on the field and found himself in a purple shirt the next day.

There's even a mandate for kind words. So structured were the circuit drills that if you weren't encouraging teammates when you had a break, your score was downgraded.

Wulff handed out dog tags simulating military ID. These had WSU's new core values on them, things like "compete" and "execution."

Then came the start of summer. This was a program that foundered since its 10-3 Holiday Bowl season of 2003, going without a winning season the past four. It needed to take a stand.

So: No drinking for the eight weeks of conditioning and summer school. Not just downtown or in campus hangouts, no drinking in apartments.

"You could go to parties; you could do whatever you want," Rowlands said. "But we were all together, so no one was going to get away with it."

Finally, less than two weeks from the finish line, somebody broke ranks. And the next Wednesday morning — the only regular day off from conditioning — players met on the field at 6 a.m.

It was an emotional, soul-rending session. A dozen or so players spoke, including freshmen. Senior linebacker Greg Trent was so infuriated he was moved to tears.

"Once that rule was broken," said Cory Evans, a fellow linebacker, "he just went haywire."

Somebody had dragged along a copy of the June 22 Seattle Times, and a story that documented 25 WSU players having been arrested in the previous 18 months. It was read aloud.

The story opened a wound the Cougars thought they had begun addressing. But so did the drinking infraction against their own rules.

They conditioned that Wednesday, and maybe the passion that flowed forth that day allowed the breach to serve a purpose.

A couple of weeks later, summer-school grades came in. WSU players, 101 of them, pulled a combined 3.15 grade-point average.

"This summer was strictly all business," Rowlands said. "Best summer, by far, since I've been here."

Now the goal is to make it the best fall.