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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Coaches able to keep it together

PULLMAN — It’s hard enough to keep a Division I-A head football coach around from one year to the next — just ask the schools that have made a change since last January.

So one can only imagine how difficult it must be to keep assistants, who make significantly less money and often move with regularity for new opportunities. At Washington State, however, there’s been nothing of the sort.

In fact, every single member of the Cougars’ coaching staff was on board last year, including graduate assistants. (That’s 11 assistants.) According to at least one of them, that near-impossibility can be chalked up to the turnover when Mike Price left Pullman for Alabama.

When Bill Doba was elevated to head coach, he doled out some of the responsibility for making new hires to his assistants, giving everyone a stake.

“The chemistry is really critical and when the head coach gives you some say in that you really take a passion in helping him get the best guys you can,” said Robin Pflugrad, Doba’s assistant head coach who is also in charge of tight ends and recruiting. “There’s parts of the day where you can waste time. In coaching football if you’re at odds with each other you’re concerned about that and all the sudden your players get less of your time. It shouldn’t be at the forefront of your mind to have to battle the guy sitting next to you at a meeting.”

And while it’s not uncommon to hear about division in the locker room hurting a team’s chances for success, it’s often overlooked just how important those same divisions could be among a staff.

“You talk to your kids about teamwork and playing together,” secondary coach Ken Greene said. “And if they see a coaching staff that’s fractured — this guy doesn’t like that guy, and this guy doesn’t like that guy — how can they buy into the concept of teamwork among themselves?”

Doba helped the cause again this off-season by securing three-year contracts for his assistants, a rarity in college football. That helped persuade his coaches who had other offers — and both Doba and Greene have said there were multiple coaches with such offers — to stick around.

WSU also has an unusual number of alums on staff, perhaps another factor in the staff’s loyalty. Of the 11 on staff, six played for the Cougars.

“I know who’s sitting in every chair and hopefully how to help them,” Pflugrad said. “It’s been great to have everybody back. You finally get on the same page and then it seems like, bam, one, two, three, four guys can leave.”

Another addition

Running back Jerome Harrison made his first appearance, albeit in street clothes, at a Cougar practice on Wednesday. Harrison is a transfer who spent the last two years at Pasadena CC.

The Kalamazoo, Mich., native was putting the finishing touches on his A.A. degree, a requirement for him to join WSU in practice. Harrison arrived in Pullman Tuesday and should suit up for his first practice today.

The 5-foot-11 tailback was ranked No. 19 on Rivals’ list of junior college players from the past year’s class. In 10 games for Pasadena in the 2003 season, he carried the ball 174 times for 1,059 yards and 10 touchdowns. He’ll join Chris Bruhn, currently tabbed as the starter, as well as Allen Thompson and Kevin McCall in the backfield.

Notes

Harrison won’t be the lone new face in WSU’s practice today. Freshman offensive lineman Andy Roof (East Valley) had been held out of Cougar camp because of a clerical error at his high school, according to Doba. Roof was cleared Wednesday and can now take the field. … With shoulder pads on for the first time, tempers flared briefly on the field Defensive lineman Aaron Johnson got the best of offensive lineman Dan Rowlands and a shoving match ensued. It was quickly broken up.