ESPN and other sites have been calling WSU's current football team part of some very "promising" rebuild jobs, in fact top 5 according to ESPN Insider. It's sucks Paul Wulff had to go, but clearly WSU needed something different to reinvigorate the fan base and Mike Leach has done that.

Now Leach will take WSU to a bowl game with Wulff's players and look great doing it. I have plenty of respect for Wulff and believed he inherited a terrible situation that put him in a no-win situation and thank him for rebuilding the program. It was a tough situation for him, but at least he did everything the right way and Leach doesn't have much to change in terms of academics and other behaviors from the team as Wulff had already "rid the team of cancers" in his first two years.

I realize some people don't want to talk about Wulff, but this post is out of respect for what Wulff was able to do and how Leach will be able to take what Wulff accomplished and make it even better. For those who have Insider access they can view the following read.

http://insider.espn.go.com/college-football/blog/_/name/mcgee_ncf_ryan/id/7557626/syracuse-tennessee-notre-dame-promising-rebuilding-programs-cfb

First off a couple of facts about the school itself. Eastern was founded in 1882, eight years before our beloved Washington State University, and was originally called the Benjamin P. Cheney Academy. The school's motto is; Start Something Big. Whether or not they've lived up to that, probably depends on your definition of big. In terms of athletics the Eagles attempt to do a couple things as well as WSU. Their primary color is a shade of red and they tried, (but failed) to copy the style of our logo. We also share a former football coach, although they probably have fonder memories of him than we do. On the field Eastern reached its program's apex in 2010 by taking home the programs only national championship, winning a thriller against Delaware in the title game. That Eagle's team, however, looked a lot different than the one that will be coming to Martin in seven months. Let's take a look!

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Signing day has come and gone, but as Brian has shown us with the series of posts on winter workouts, the college football season never really ends. As we move into a pretty dead period in terms of football news, unless your starting middle linebacker gets in a fight or has an unfortunate traffic stop, I'd like to take a look at how all of our 2012 opponents look starting with BYU. The Cougs trip to LaVell Edwards stadium on September 1st, will be a pretty big game in a lot of respects as it will be the return of a hopefully healthy Jeff Tuel and the first game of the Leach era. So let's take a look at what those other Cougars look like after Signing Day.

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When do you guys think our first recruit of the 2013 class will commit?

More after the Jump

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We all know about Leach and his ongoing suit against ESPN, so I was thinking today I wonder if that will hurt WSU in its recruiting as well as on the national stage. The new Pac12 TV deal is with ESPN and Fox so WSU will be involved a lot with ESPN. Will our highlights be shown as much as other schools? If we are winning games and end up having a big game against a ranked opponent will this sway ESPN and College GameDay? Will we see less exposure that will hurt us with getting recruits to Pullman? Do you think ESPN will be professional and do their job? Will they cover WSU, but not talk about Leach? I was actually surprised they let Scott Van Pelt have Leach on his radio show. I noticed when Leach started going a certain direction SVP moved on quickly and ended the interview. I think ESPN will try and be professional and cover things in a normal way, but I think if they have to cover WSU they will keep Leach out of the limelight.

Let me know if you think I need to add another option to the poll. CougCenter loves polls!

I'm a high school sports reporter covering Washington State commits WR Alex Jackson, WR Gabriel Marks, and LB Khalil Pettway signing day ceremonies tomorrow afternoon. I will be interviewing them after they sign their letters of intent and would like to know if any of the Cougar faithful had any specific questions they wanted asked. Culver City's ceremony (Jackson and Pettway) is at 12:30 p.m. and Marks will be signing at his later in the day.

You can email me the question at Ed [at] SportsJournalLA [dot] com or leave a comment on this post and I'll check in the morning before I go to the events.

Thanks,
Ed Gonzalez
Editor-in-Chief
Los Angeles Sports Journal
www.SportsJournalLA.com

With Signing Day only a couple days away and with recruiting talk peaking I wanted to look back at the 2007 WSU recruiting class. My idea is simple to break down the class and examine their contributions to the program, or lack thereof. One very important thing to keep in mind; this was the last class to be signed by Bill Doba and his staff before Paul Wulff took over. Another is that all of the players in this class have moved on from the WSU football program in one way or another. Lastly this class was rated 54th in the nation by Scout and last in the conference by both Scout and Rivals. These are the same guys that saw the program go 5-7, 2-11, 1-11, 2-10 and 4-8. On to the breakdown!

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These are last year's commits according to Cougfan.

Wendell Taise - didn't get in
Moritz Christ - zero stars, committed in late March
Alex Mitchell - didn't get in, will count in this class probably as a DT
Matt Goetz - JC, 2 years left
Lenard Williams - JC, 1 year left
Ian Knight - JC, 2 year lefts
Taylor Meighn - JC, 1 year left
Demetrius Cherry - didn't get in
Nico Aumua - didn't get in
Eli Edwards - didn't get in
Rico Forbes - JC, 2 years left
TJ Poloai - kicked off team
David Davis - Red-shirted
Brock Lutes - didn't get in

So out of our 14 linemen commits...

1 guy has 4 years of eligibility left (Davis) 3-star
1 guy may have 4 but wasn't even rated (Christ)
1 guy got kicked off team (Poloai) 3-star
6 guys didn't get in - all 2-stars
5 guys were JC guys 2 of which didn't red-shirt and only have 1 more year left - all 5 of them were 2-stars

PS - Feel free to add in to the discussion about years left of eligibility. Or whatever. Gotta wake up soon. Goodnight!

After the recruiting deadline passed this spring I reflected back on the events that occurred from that day and since national signing day is this Wednesday I thought I would share. I really found it interesting how emotionally wrapped up we can get over an 18 year olds decision. (I will admit over the years I have been upset over a recruit's decisions and Nusser has had to bring me back down to reality. I had to fight it again this last year, so do not worry I am part of the "we" category) So I want to dig into recruiting deeper to see if there is any reason why we should get wrapped up in an 18 year olds decision.

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You guys should be ecstatic about getting Leach to coach the Cougs. Any team would be lucky to have him. You'll be winning a lot of games.

As a Tech grad of a couple of decades ago I can say in hindsight he is better off not being there. The students are indifferent and the administration is corrupt.

Although most of my immediate family members are TTU grads I had no problem in suggesting to my daughter she attend Columbia instead of Tech.

Don't get me wrong, I think the folks in Lubbock are some of the friendliest people in the world. The students, however, are a jealous bunch and are envious of grads who have done better than they can ever hope to (I base this on the fact that I have grad degrees from Texas A&M and The University of Texas as well and they are always extremely happy and supportive when their grads do well).

If you treat Leach right, he'll be around for a long time and you'll be treated to some wonderfully exciting football. Congratulations WSU! You have a lot of new Cougar fans.