Jacob Thorpe: All the good vibes around Washington State’s season have turned to tired trepidation

PULLMAN – Does Washington State even want to play football?

I’m not just asking about the team, necessarily, although the spark of inspiration was nowhere to be found amongst the Cougars as they slogged their way to a Senior Night loss to one of the worst teams in the country. I mean WSU the commonwealth – the alumni, the students, the folks who married into Cougars families and through osmosis and trips to Ferdinand’s Ice Cream Shoppe became Cougars themselves.

If someone tells you they saw Saturday’s game in person, be extremely skeptical. The official attendance was 17,088, and maybe that is how many tickets were sold. But let’s say, generously, 5,000 people were involved in Saturday’s game in some capacity, and that includes the fans, the band, the players, and the good folks checking passes outside almost-empty parking lots.

Cross the pass? On Thanksgiving weekend? For Wyoming? Sorry, that’s not the UW that gets WSU students to head back to campus early. The Cougars won eight of their first nine games and spent a month ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. Yet there was little excitement in the stands on Saturday and the team matched that energy.

And so WSU’s first year playing a mostly Mountain West schedule ends with a dud. It is the second straight season a promising start has been undone by three November losses. What keeps happening to this team? To this offense, that seems so explosive all year long and then suddenly can’t get a first down against one of its least-challenging opponents?

The reality is, WSU is already in triage mode. The best players have the option to transfer and make vast sums of money at other schools. After all, Cam Ward was WSU’s starting quarterback the past two years, but he will head to New York as a Heisman Trophy Finalist and member of the Miami Hurricanes.

Now the spotlight is on quarterback John Mateer, whose powerful arm and fast legs have accounted for nearly 4,000 passing and rushing yards this season. Mateer is a thrilling quarterback to watch and someone who will doubtlessly command some offers in the NIL market that WSU will be unable to match. It is reported that he already has a million-dollar offer.

“The bowl game right now is really on the back burner. The front burner is keeping our football team together,” coach Jake Dickert said. “On paper … we have a lot of really dynamic pieces to continue to build our football program on. We need to keep them here. College football is crazy.”

What can the Cougars counteroffer?

“These guys know where I stand,” Dickert said. “Loyalty is important. It is. Treating these kids right, developing these kids right, showing them we can take them to where they want to go in the long haul, I think that’s very important. You can do everything you want to do right here from Washington State. Surround them with people that can take them there and challenge the hell out of them every single day. And never apologize for it.”

These are important values and the players who demonstrate them have always been the kinds of players who you want to build your team around. But the money has become so big. Millions of dollars big. And it does not seem like many guys are able to turn down that kind of permanent financial security, even if they would prefer to be loyal.

Perhaps it is hard for WSU fans to make the trek when so much of a team’s success relies on a player, for whom their emotional investment seems bound to be outmatched by a big dollar investment from another program.

Telling your eventual children “I saw that WSU legend play in person …” someday doesn’t carry the same weight when it’s followed with “before he got really good at Oklahoma.”

It seems the celebration at the end of a good season has been replaced with trepidation.

So, WSU fans wait with bated breath as the sharks circle. Was 2024 a success? The answer may not be determined until Mateer shows up for fall camp.