Dave Boling: A painful reminder for WSU loyalists struggling in the wake of Jake Dickert’s exit – it’s all transactional

Just to be cautious, I’m going to consider any hiring at Washington State as an interim position.

The same advice applies at the many universities across the country that have been exploited as career catapults for coaches and players and administrators.

The likelihood of abrupt transplanting has been made all the more common since the NCAA abdicated the role of draconian babysitter that it had historically occupied.

So, until somebody can unearth and appoint a wise person as Collegiate Sports Czar, to shape and impose reasonable limits on payments and movements, college athletics will remain a rapacious food chain.

Perhaps employing the interim title on all jobs will make it a little easier for fans when the next Jake Dickert (or hoops coach Kyle Smith or athletic director Pat Chun, etc.) decamps Pullman for greener (in a monetary sense) pastures.

Critical mass seemed to have peaked last spring when it became clear that the administrator who presumably was trying to retain the coveted Smith was Chun, who shortly thereafter took the AD job at Washington.

If we view them as having been interims from the start, it feels like less of a betrayal.

Meanwhile, fans will naturally lament the loss of WSU’s two previous interim quarterbacks, Cam Ward and John Mateer. Three seasons out of those guys? Pretty good for interims. 

The system allows, and encourages, Ward and Mateer to accept life-changing incomes from the more affluent collegiate corporations.

Be real: How many of the great quarterbacks in WSU history would have stayed in Pullman if seven-figure paydays were available elsewhere? Some, maybe. Hard to picture.

What now? Go find some more athletes to develop and release into the marketplace. Maybe there’s something gratifying in that niche.

I researched a quote from someone near this situation last summer, who observed that college football now resembled the fiscal pecking order in Major League Baseball, exposed in the book “Moneyball.”

“The guys with money can spend it … if you’re Oakland (As), and you develop Jason Giambi, you’re going to lose him to the Yankees.”

The quote on the status of contemporary life was from football coach Jake Dickert. Now on his way to take over the Wake Forest program.

Some of us have needed more time to understand and cope with this reality.

I did a column last spring after the Chun/Smith exodus, suggesting that WSU still had so much to offer candidates, even though the Pacific-12 Conference was disintegrating. I was then surprised when they failed to get the first coach they targeted … from the Big Sky Conference.

WSU hoops had just gone to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, and I thought they surely could lure a coach with a heftier portfolio.

I was not yet aware of the reality of the marketplace, and I was off-base to scoff. AD Anne McCoy appears to have done a nice job of identifying and landing Eastern Washington’s David Riley, who is off to a very promising start with the Cougs.

But I guess we should consider him an interim, too. Like everybody else.

In a conference call Wednesday afternoon, McCoy seemed a compelling spokesperson for the position of the athletic department. She said she has been “a Coug” for 24 years, and, yes, days like this hurt.

“Our situation highlights the need for changes,” McCoy said, especially given the timing of the Cougars’ date in the Holiday Bowl against Syracuse on Dec. 27.

Her suggestions for fans feeling betrayed by the losses of coaches and players. “You can’t take it personally.” It would become “a sad place if we stop trying because we’re afraid to get hurt.”

The goals of Cougar administrators in this environment? “Making (WSU) the best place for the right person to be,” McCoy said. Well-stated. Even though that connection can be nullified, too, with enough dollar signs.

She made it clear that the staff and roster impermanence is not just a Cougar problem. Entirely true. Sadly.

Is anyone immune?

One of the greatest coaches I’ve ever dealt with, at any level, was Frosty Westering, football coach at Pacific Lutheran – for 32 years.

He had been a Marine, but was also a philosopher, an author, and a student of motivation. His book, “Make the Big Time Where You Are,” outlined his shrewd understanding that the substance of the coach’s job was the relationship with his athletes, and trying to make them better humans.

Westering won four lower-division national titles, never had a losing season, and influenced so many young athletes that when he announced his retirement, Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh sent him a message of congratulations for having shaped the lives of hundreds of young men.

Isn’t that the kind of lifelong impact that is relinquished when coaches and players hopscotch the country in search of the highest bidder?

Is such career stability even possible now, given such tempestuous forces? Depends on the coach, and also how they deal with their own realities and motivation.

At Gonzaga, Mark Few has been targeted for every top basketball coaching job in the country, but has stayed at GU the entire 21st century. GU has done a great job keeping him happy. And he has kept his word.

The contemporary sports environment makes Few’s loyalty seem as rare as his remarkable competitive achievements.

Dickert has drawn criticism from pained Cougar loyals. Of course, the sense of being scorned is painful. Some have called him a liar for moving on after professing his bonds to WSU.

Last summer, Dickert talked about having grown up in a small town in Wisconsin, and appreciating the “small-town values” in a place like Pullman.

He spoke of the convenience of being able to leave his office and attend one of his kids’ functions in only a few minutes.

Was he lying about any of that? Not really. The system has changed, deeply, existentially.

Truths have become temporary, now, some of them turning out to be merely interim truths.