WSU president Elizabeth Cantwell says Cougars' next coach should have 'contemporary' and 'demonstrated' success

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Dec. 9—PULLMAN — The criteria Washington State is using to narrow down its head coaching search is beginning to look a little clearer.

On a KJR radio segment with Ian Furness on Tuesday afternoon, WSU president Elizabeth Cantwell said the Cougars' next head coach will have "demonstrated success, let's call it, in the contemporary college football game."

"We need a builder who has that fire in the belly for what that means to be in a startup-era program with this new conference," Cantwell said. "Everybody's got to be, at some level, able to manage talent, culture and strategy in this new era. But really having NIL and 'portal fluency,' I call it — that's super important to us right now in this time when the portal has to be looked at not as an impediment, but as a strategic tool.

"We definitely need someone who has some demonstrated success, let's call it, in the contemporary college football game, which is between now and the next time everything goes up in the air with media rights deals and conferences change again. It is that really driving culture, driving with NIL and portal as tools, not as impediments, and really getting the absolute most out of the incredible young men who come to us to serve us as student-athletes."

What does that mean for the Cougars' pool of candidates to replace Jimmy Rogers, who left for Iowa State over the weekend? The extent of the list remains unclear, but it could be bad news for longtime coach Rick Neuheisel, who said on Tuesday he would be interested in the WSU job. Neuheisel may be an experienced coach who could win with the Cougars, but he's also 64 years old, and he hasn't coached at the college level since 2011, his last year at UCLA.

To his credit, Neuheisel has likely stayed up to the date with the contemporary game as a college football analyst for CBS, a position he's held since 2015.

To assist with the coaching search, WSU is enlisting the help of a search firm named CSA, which former athletic director Anne McCoy used to hire Rogers. Former WSU president Kirk Schulz is listed as a consultant at the firm, but according to a source familiar with the situation, Schulz works exclusively on the academics side. He isn't involved with the Cougs' coaching search.

Cantwell was last the president at Utah State, which is WSU's opponent in the Idaho Potato Bowl, set for Dec. 22 in Boise. While with the Aggies, she helped hire coach Bronco Mendenhall, a well-regarded head coach who led USU to a 6-6 season this fall.

That's about as much as Cantwell said about WSU's coaching search. But she also mentioned this: She and other school brass have been working on improving the fan experience at Gesa Field.

"We are on board with that," Cantwell said, "and I would say the last few home games that I've been to, every game, the fan experience is improving. The things I'll point to for next year is, we have now the positioning with funding to make sure that we have the new scoreboard and new inside the stadium experiences. We've got alcohol in the stands. We've got a whole plethora of things happening right outside the stadium. Keep an eye on us. It's getting better and better and better every game."

Also on the radio, Cantwell touched on Rogers' sudden departure on Friday, leaving after just one 6-6 campaign.

"It was a surprise," Cantwell said. "But it is the kind of thing that we see all over the place right now in college athletics. As I'm sure everybody has noticed, there's Rubik's Cubes of change going on everywhere. The difference for us at WSU, and a lot of what else is going on there, is we're part of a startup conference as well. The old Pac-12 is the old Pac-12. The new Pac-12 is a startup. And there is no other startup conference out there."

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