Let's sneak in a COTY vote during this final week before Cougar football.

Jane LaRiviere is the wildly successful WSU rowing coach.

Larry Scott is our Pac-12 commissioner and purveyor of fine, modern architecture. He is not a Coug, but $20 million a year kinda buys your way in.

Let's keep rolling.

Klay Thompson, despite being the two seed, has become my favorite to win COTY 2011. Don't get me wrong; I'm not writing off June Daugherty. It's just that something tells me that June can be the odds-on favorite for COTY 2012 or 2013 by getting the Cougar women into the NCAA tournament. That would be a feat nothing short of remarkable considering the program's past futility. The women appear to be on their way.

However, as far as men's basketball is concerned, Klay Thompson will go down as one of the all-time greats in WSU history. The question remains: can we as a fanbase value his talent over his team's win-loss record? That, I think, will determine whether Klay goes the distance in this tournament.

Polls open below.

I dread this matchup.

See, Bill Moos was a perfect number one seed when I drafted up this bracket back in May. But how can you vote against Shawn Swartz? The WSU Track and Field star who is bravely fighting leukemia is about as inspirational as they come. We could be looking at the classic 8-1 tournament upset that causes you to trash your brackets.

I work with chemotherapy on a quasi-daily basis, and sometimes when I head up to the infusion suite I wonder what I feels like to be on the other end. To be fighting a disease that could realistically kill you... to have no idea what the future holds (positive or negative)... to take medicine that is basically going to trash any sense of normalcy in your body. The thing is: I can't even comprehend what it's like. The only thing I can really know is that I hope it's never me, and I really really hope it's never someone I love. All I can really do as I take medicine up the stairs is take some shred of solace in knowing that I'm a small part of the battle against it.

Before you vote, though, remember that Coug of the Year and being an exceptional individual aren't mutually exclusive. Shawn Swartz doesn't need to win Coug of the Year to be validated as a hero. Voting for Bill Moos doesn't mean you love cancer, nor should it make you feel guilty. It just means you think Bill Moos fits whatever set of metrics you prefer in determining the most important Cougar Athletic figure of the year. Moos has kept our football fanbase together through some of the worst seasons in program history, and has almost 100% of us in the Cougar Nation believing the future will be markedly better than the present. In all sports. That's not an accomplishment to take lightly. It's because of Bill Moos that more people like Shawn Swartz will get to carry out their dreams in a WSU uniform.

With that in mind, let's take it to the poll. May the best man win.

It's time for Coug of the Year to ramp things up. I promised to have a COTY champion by kickoff of the football season, and we're going to make it happen.

So, with that in mind, let's get French.

This is not only a battle between different sports, but a battle of the sexes as well. La is a feminine pronoun in french; Le is the masculine. Jane LaRiviere is the most successful Cougar sports coach no one talks about. LeAndre Daniels has proven to be a fighter and a source of ongoing inspiration for the WSU football team. To the rundown:

(6) Jane LaRiviere

Washington State, which - I'm obligated to remind you - is about a half hour from a major body of water, finished 12th in this year's NCAA rowing championships. WSU's second varsity eight and varsity four each placed tenth in their individual races. In most revenue sports fans would murder for a Top 10 national finish; in Cougar rowing it's not that big of a shock at all. At least not anymore.

Of course, the Pac-12 will continue to be a juggernaut. The conference placed three teams in the top five overall, and the Cougs were one of five Pac-10 teams to place at the NCAA championships. Still, it's nothing short of incredible that the Cougars are finishing ahead of both major conference opponents (Michigan, Clemson) and traditional Ivy League powers (Harvard, Dartmouth). 17 members of the team earned Pac-10 All-Academic honors.

Jane is the the most successful coach currently roaming the sidelines (shorelines?) at WSU today. Just please don't tell anyone. We'd like to actually keep a coach of her caliber.

(11) LeAndre Daniels

I always appreciated that the TV version of Friday Night Lights featured a stunning, life-altering injury to one of the team's players. Wait, wait. I don't mean appreciate as in I "liked" someone getting injured. I just mean that I liked how realistic the show was about it. Football is fun... but it can also be a dangerous, brutal sport. A sport that injures. A sport where you can be flying around the field one minute and lying in agony on the turf the next. Promising careers get cut short. Seasons are lost. It's not just football, it's almost every contact sport. Ask Steve Moore. Ask Steve Zakuani. Or LeAndre Daniels.

It's good that serious accidents don't happen often. But they still happen too often to good people, and some people are just more unlucky than others. After redshirting in 2008, Daniels' 2009 season came to a close with a broken leg in the second game of the year against Hawai'i. In 2010 a freak neck injury in practice that was thought to be minor turned out to be a fracture of the C1 vertebrae. That one would be more than just a season-ending injury. Daniels would have to call it a career. The risk of further damage to his spine was just too great to justify playing again.

Nevertheless, Daniels remains an inspiration to the entire Cougar defense, including his roommate Tyree Toomer. Toomer mentioned to Cougfan.com in July that LeAndre was out of the neck brace and continuing to improve.

It's a shame Daniels never had a decent chance to showcase his talent on the field. He was still honorable mention All-Academic for the Pac-10 in 2009.

COTY keeps on truckin', with a potential upset special. This one should get interesting.

(7) June Daugherty

I guess it's darkest before dawn, huh?

For those of you who don't follow Cougar women's basketball closely, I'll fill you in. On January 6th, the women's basketball program had essentially confirmed my long-held belief that it is cursed. The Cougs' loss to Oregon put them at 0-3 in conference and a horrific 2-13 overall. This included the downright travishamockery of a 77-38 loss to UC Davis (later a 16 seed in the NCAA tournament... but c'mon).

The Cougs would then catch fire (as much fire as a maligned program can ignite)... going on to win three of their next four in Pac-10 play, and six of their next ten. That might not seem exceptional, but consider for a moment that the Cougars had only won six conference games in a season one other time this millennium (2000-01). Also consider that from Fall 2001 to Spring 2005 the Cougars only won five Pac-10 games. Total. This program has been to depths that modern science once thought unreachable. Now, finally, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. And it's all thanks to June Daugherty.

Oh, and her replacement at the UW? Ask a Husky fan about how that went.

(10) Zack Williams

The 203rd pick in the NFL Draft, and WSU's only player to hear his name called in New York. As football is still king in college athletics, I fully expect this to be a 7-10 upset in Williams' favor. It is quite strange, though, that our one and only draft selection this year would also come from the unit that caused a good deal of our troubles that last three seasons. Let's hope the next few years feature more Zack Williamses and less [insert underperforming lineman here].

Now that the lockout's over, there's another Coug playing at football's highest level. Never a bad thing.

COTY rolls on. Our next matchup features the man bringing bushels of money to WSU, and a young man who had to leave the school to make some of his own.

(3) Larry Scott

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Larry is our first non-Coug candidate for Coug of the Year. Nevertheless, when a conference commissioner spearheads a media rights contract that is going to pay little Washington State somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million a year, you can buy your way into the competition.

Larry Scott is everything Tom Hansen wasn't. Innovative. Relentless. The SEC and Big Ten no longer show us how to do business... the Pac-12 operates on its own playing field and if you don't like it we'll come and take one of your schools away. Like you, Colorado. Utah? Why not. We almost got Texas, too, had Texas been a University with any real guts and not just an institution leveraging a bigger piece of the pie from the rest of its suddenly smaller (and easier to win) conference.

Never mind all that. When the dust settled from realignment, Scott still pulled in a record-breaking deal for the conference even before working out the details of a Pac-12 television network. Would Tom Hansen be courting Google and Apple as possible operators for a conference-network-of-the-future? I think we all know the answer.

(14) DeAngelo Casto

I feel I've reached closure with determining Klay Thompson's legacy. I felt his jump to the NBA was the right one to make, and his career at WSU was as remarkable individually as you'll find -- albeit a bit underwhelming for the team as a whole.

With Casto, I'm not sure how I feel. He was faced with a tough decision to make, and made it. But there's always going to be that what if. Not just for fans; I'm sure DeAngelo will be wondering the same as he watches the NCAA season from afar next year. What if his NBA stock doesn't rise while he's in Europe? Would he have been better off playing on home soil to a larger audience of scouts? We'll never know. Could he have been the one to lead the Cougs back to the promised land of the NCAA tournament? Not anymore.

Still, this nomination is about what he accomplished while at WSU. And for three years, DeAngelo Casto was a beast. The motor behind our team's defense - and often the offense - Casto never lacked intensity and never made a game dull. His numbers speak for themselves, but his energy went beyond that. My favorite thing about Casto was how he was the first player under either Bennett that actively wanted to get the crowd fired up. Ivory Clark and Jeff Varem were big men who often fed off the crowd, but they rarely tried to interact with it the way Casto did.

"He's screaming his own name!", someone near me in the ZZU CRU randomly yelled during his freshman year. Sure enough, when I looked down at the court, he was. I'm thinking that's how I'll remember DeAngelo.

The polls are open below.

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On we go through the 2011 COTY Bracket!

(2) Klay Thompson

When we last left Coug of the Year, Jeshua Anderson's first round matchup came to us shortly after his third NCAA 400-meter hurdles championship in four years. Now we find Klay Thompson's name called on the eve of his NBA Draft selection. I'm not doing it intentionally, but I seem to be stacking the deck against our lower seeds.

It's great to be excited about the NBA draft for reasons other than Bill Simmons' annual draft diary. And with the downfall of Steven A. Smith, we lost the greatest thing about Steven A. Smith's NBA draft coverage - the Steven A. Smith Heckling Society of Gentlemen. ESPN has tried, but the entertainment value and the drama of the Association's draft have consistently failed to match the NFL's product in recent years. Needless to say, I haven't payed much attention to my television on draft night since waiting through the second round for Kyle Weaver's name to be called.

I know many of us, myself included, wanted Klay to play out his senior season, but I've always held a certain belief about players declaring for the draft early. That belief is: If you are confident you'll be a lottery pick, you should go. Period. Plain and simple. Your stock can usually only go down from the lottery in your final year(s) of college (hey, Jeremy Pargo!) and being projected in the lottery means you're also guaranteed to be a first rounder, which in turn brings guaranteed first round money. If you're borderline first round, don't even bother keeping your name in the draft. Finish college, because a slip to the second round means you lose the guaranteed cash as well as an opportunity to make yourself more marketable by dominating the college ranks during your final season.

This is why Klay Thompson made the right call, and Isaiah Thomas most certainly did not. At least from my viewpoint.

How will we remember Klay? I think I'll always remember his individual game fondly. One of the best to ever play for Washington State; arguably the greatest, given how popular and how skilled the game is today. Still, there's a bittersweet feeling about his time as a Cougar. The team never made a NCAA Tournament in his three years, and the marijuana arrest provides a cloud of scrutiny over his final year of school, not to mention his draft stock. It really shouldn't, though. It seems obvious to me Klay isn't some closet stoner; he's a smart kid who worked hard on and off the court and just made one dumb mistake like thousands of other young people have. Klay's redemption came from his gutsy apology to the crowd on Senior night, and then a win in his final game in Pullman over Northwestern. A victory that sent WSU to Madison Square Garden for the semifinals of the NIT.

That NIT tournament run was such a fitting microcosm of the Klay Thompson era - a wonderful ride that just never managed to end the way we all wanted it to.

(15) Reid Forrest

Believe it or not, we really like Reid Forrest here at CougCenter.

Let's set aside the hyperbole for a moment, and just focus on how ridiculously outstanding Forrest was at his job at WSU.

Over 40 yards per punt every year. Over 45 as a senior. We'll round up and call it three (!) 3,000 yard punting seasons. An 84 yard punt! You can easily make the argument he's the best to ever play the position at WSU. And the only reason there's an argument to begin with is because Kyle Basler summoned the punting gods (and possibly the actual God) to do his bidding against Texas in the Holiday Bowl.

Here's to you, Reid. We saw way too much of you these last four years, but thank God you at least made watching all of your punts enjoyable.

Continue reading this post »

Sometimes, timing is everything.

Full bracket here... but I think it's safe to say this was advantageous timing for Jeshua Anderson's name to be called in the 5/12 COTY matchup.

(5) Jeshua Anderson

Three-time NCAA Champion. Four-time Pac-10 Champion.

Anderson's only real hurdle to representing Cougar Nation in London is the fact he's American. It's true. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics the U.S. swept the medal podium in the men's 400-meter hurdles. 18 of the 24 gold medalists in the event's Olympic history are American. As our own Mark Sandritter pointed out, ten men in the world ran sub-49 second races in 2011. Six of them were American. I won't be able to even look at the TV when Jeshua is up at the Olympic trials... I'll be far too nervous. One stumble, one little mistake, one clip of the gate could mean he falls short of his dream. Only three hurdlers can make the U.S. olympic team. Odds are any of the three could take gold.

I suggest Jeshua take the easy way out, and immediately start filing paperwork for dual citizenship in Estonia.

(12) Paul Wulff

I'm still upset about EA Sports giving Washington State a "1" Prestige rating. Notre Dame and Michigan got a 5 despite the fact they haven't been legitimate national title contenders in years. Northwestern got a 3. Duke even got a 2. Don't tell me this is about what a school's done recently. SMU has a rating of 3. EA apparently remembers the Pony Express, but not a school that played in two Rose Bowls in the last fifteen years? Oh, and at our very, very worst - we still beat SMU. A SMU team that would go on to play in a Bowl. (note to my extended family that went to SMU: sorry)

Two things irk me about how WSU is viewed on a national - or even regional - level. The first is that we've become the "insert crappy school here" in jokes about college football. The second is that we aren't viewed as a big market (read: Seattle) team even though we technically should be considered a part of it. That second one is not really relevant to this discussion, though.

What is relevant is that WSU had become a laughingstock. A punchline. The national media that didn't respect us much to begin with turned on us even more, and the average college football fan probably doesn't remember this program used to be one of the strongest in the country.

Paul Wulff was about to become the fall guy for all of this. Right or wrong, he was on the hot seat because WSU football was incredibly non-competitive for the better part of two years. And then one game changed everything. EA Sports probably thinks this never happened, but on a cool fall day the Washington State Cougars blew out the Oregon State Beavers on the road. It wasn't a fluke, or an overtime game... the Cougs just punched OSU in the mouth and won convincingly. By seventeen.

You can say Wulff deserves the blame for our loss of prestige, and you would be somewhat right about that. But Paul Wulff makes the COTY ballot because what he's still been able to do despite our "prestige" being in the tank. While the team has struggled, he's reeled in recruiting classes with the likes of Jeff Tuel and Marquess Wilson. He's convinced good players to be excited about building something rather than just winning in their freshman year. When it looked like the Cougs had nothing to play for except the Apple Cup, they came out in Reser Stadium with their arms linked and shocked the entire conference.

Paul Wulff could be considered part of our PR problem... but don't be too shocked if he also ends up being the solution.