Commentary: Is Jimmy Rogers the right coach for WSU? He certainly brings potential

Something we definitely don’t know: whether this Washington State coaching hire will be any good.

WSU announced Saturday that it is bringing on 37-year-old Jimmy Rogers as the new football coach, replacing Jake Dickert, who left for Wake Forest earlier this month.

In 2023, Rogers won an FCS national title with South Dakota State in his first season as head coach, taking over a Jackrabbits team that captured a championship the year before as well. He didn’t necessarily build that program, where he served as a defensive coordinator before becoming head coach, but he maintained a level of excellence in going 15-0 in 2023.

Still, there is never anything close to a guarantee that success at one program will translate to success at another. This is triply true when the coach jumps from the FCS to the FBS, where the nation takes notice of just about every game. Like grading draft picks or trades, it would be foolish to label this a win or a whiff, but …

Here are some things that we do know:

For starters – non-FBS hires have worked out. Often about as well as they possibly can. Former Washington coach Kalen DeBoer is the epitome of such division-jumping prosperity. The man who won three NAIA championships at Sioux Falls went 9-3 with Fresno State in his first full year in the FBS, then went 25-3 in his two years on Montlake. He’s now, as you surely know, the head coach at Alabama.

There is Craig Bohl, too. Bohl led North Dakota State to three straight FCS championships before being hired at Wyoming in 2014. His tenure with the Cowboys included six bowl games and a tie for the Mountain West championship.

Oh, and there’s Dickert. He only had three full years at Washington State, as he replaced Nick Rolovich in the middle of the 2021 season. Still, he led the Cougs to a pair of bowl games in those three years.

Here’s another thing we know: Rogers has a chance to market Washington State in a way we haven’t seen before. This doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a better way than in years past … but it could be.

Before the Pac-12 as we know it disbanded, Rogers’ predecessors could always tell prospective players that they had the chance to play in one of the nation’s top conferences. That likely sparked some dreams of Rose Bowl berths and a number of nationally televised games. But how often did the former happen? The Cougs haven’t had a Rose Bowl appearance since the 2002 season and have had just two since 1930. A good chunk of the time, their championship hopes have been crushed by the end of September.

That’s about to change, though. What the new Pac-12 – which will be expanded to eight teams in 2026 – lacks in prestige, it makes up for in opportunity. USC and Oregon may not be regularly locking horns with Washington State, but the chances for season after season to be relevant through December spike exponentially.

This is intriguing for a fan base, no doubt, but to players, too. Would an 11-1 Pac-12 champion likely make their way into the 12-team College Football Playoff? I mean … 11-1 Mountain West champion Boise State just got a first-round bye. Could an individual in the Pac-12 rise to national prominence? I mean … Boise State’s Austin Jeanty just finished second in one of the closer Heisman races we’ve seen.

Coaches seldom get into the profession to be salesmen, but that is one of the chief requisites of the job. Does Rogers have that skill?

If you watched the Holiday Bowl on Friday, you could see that there was still talent on that Cougs roster. Quarterback Zevi Eckhaus, stepping in for the departed John Mateer, finished with 363 yards on 31-of-43 passing. Washington State still suffered a 52-35 loss to 21st-ranked Syracuse, but it didn’t mean the game didn’t produce cause for some optimism.

It’s a whole new world out there in college football with NIL and the transfer portal. Maybe all of this comes down to who can shell out the most money, with lower-level schools knowing they can rarely hold onto elite talent.

But from where I sit, neither the Cougs nor the Pac-12 is dead quite yet. No opinion on whether this will be a good hire, but the potential is much higher than a lot might think.