About The Authors: Jeff Nusser

Jeff is a freelance journalist who has lived his entire life in the state of Washington following its respective sports teams, but his most passionate love is the Washington State University Cougars, given the bachelor of arts degree he earned there in 1999. He worked for The Daily Evergreen for two and half years and was editor in chief in fall of 1997 -- which just so happened to coincide with the Cougars' first Pac-10 football championship and Rose Bowl appearance in 67 years.

Thus, a love affair began.

He was there the last time WSU basketball was any good before the Bennetts arrived, watching Mark Hendrickson, Donminic Ellison, Shammond Antrum, Isaac Fontaine and Tavaras Mack advance to the NIT, and he's been following the team ever since – even against all odds as bad coaches and inadequate players ran the program into the ground.

Nuss has been blogging for about since 2005, first at a personal blog, Hangin' With The Nuss, then at a Seattle-based blog, Seattle Sports Report, before starting a WSU basketball blog titled WSU HOOPS. That led to his most recent venture, CougCenter.com, which is part of the SB Nation network of college sites. He previously was a working journalist for The (Tacoma) News Tribune and CBS Sportsline.com, and his freelance sports work has appeared in many places, including Lindy's sports annuals and Horizon Air Magazine.

His most recent venture is the launch of Cougar Sports Weekly, an email newsletter delivered to subscribers each Monday morning. His next project will be writing for the 2011-2012 College Basketball Prospectus.

Since retiring from the commercial sports writing business seven years ago, Nuss has been a high school journalism and English teacher.

When not watching any Cougar sports that he can, Nuss spends the bulk of his time hanging out with his family.