The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (70 page)

Hours later, Wilson’s stepfather in California called Moos. He recognized the gravity of the situation and wanted to resolve it. He asked Moos what he could do to help.

“You tell him to come see me,” Moos said.

The next day Wilson showed up at Moos’s office.

“You got all this talent,” Moos told him. “But you need to be a leader on this ball club.”

Wilson appeared nervous but sincere.

“What I suggest you do is take a deep breath,” Moos said. “Go through the weekend. Watch us play UCLA. You’ll have a hollow feeling. Trust me. You’ll have a hollow feeling. Then come see me after the game. And if you’re committed to being on this team, I’ll go to bat for you.”

In addition to trying to quell the Wilson dustup, Moos had to prepare to brief the board of trustees in response to the letter from the disgruntled parent. Meanwhile, public criticism against Leach mounted. “Argh, matey! Remember all that excitement that came with the hiring of Mike Leach?” a
Seattle Weekly
blogger wrote. “Turns out the Leach Era in Pullman is already a disaster, and getting uglier and more embarrassing every day. This morning comes news that star WSU receiver Marquess Wilson left last night’s practice in a tiff and … quit the team. If the school had any sense AD Bill Moos would make Leach walk the plank this morning. Somewhere Paul Wulff looks pretty good right now.”

National writers were calling out Leach, too. “Back in the preseason I was among the many delusional media types that thought Mike Leach would sweep into Pullman and lead Washington State to its first bowl berth in nine years,” wrote
Sports Illustrated
’s Stewart Mandel. “As it turns out, the 2-7 Cougars will not be bowling, and Leach has had one of the worst debut seasons of any newly hired coach in the country. It’s not just that Wazzu is 0-6 in the Pac-12; it’s that the Pirate is compounding things with some of his comments and actions.” Mandel called Leach’s actions following the Utah game “a Bob Knight–esque exercise in verbal bullying.”

Leach ignored the criticism. “I’m not real conscious of it,” he said. “People want change and accountability around here. Then you do it and they don’t want it.”

In Leach’s view, the team had reacted very positively to the loss to Utah and Wilson’s departure. Team unity had cemented, and the players were practicing with a renewed sense of commitment and determination. That was especially true among the receivers. “There are a bunch of receivers playing really well right now,” Leach said shortly after Wilson left. “They viewed Marquess as the alpha receiver. They thought they had to be like him to be a good receiver. Now that he is gone, they are stepping up. We lost some talent. But we gained in terms of other guys starting to play harder. And walking off a team is the football version of treason.”

One person who was particularly sensitive to all the controversy swirling around Leach was Bill Moos. With UCLA scheduled to arrive in Pullman in a couple days for a Saturday afternoon game, Moos showed up in Leach’s office unannounced. Leach was at his desk, prepping for the Bruins. Moos handed him a
Los Angeles Times
story dated December 26, 1993. One of his staff members had found it on the Internet. The headline was
RING OF FIRE: IN HIS FOURTH SEASON, BADGER COACH BARRY ALVAREZ PROVIDES THE SPARK THAT HAS IGNITED WISCONSIN
’
S LONG-DORMANT HOPES FOR THE ROSE BOWL
.

“Read this,” Moos told him. “In Alvarez’s first year at Wisconsin, he had fifty-two players leave the program when they learned what was going to be expected of them.”

Leach thanked him and read the piece. In Alvarez’s first season at Wisconsin, in 1990, the team went 1-10. The only team it beat was Ball State. “From my first day with the team, when I talked about commitment, I knew we were in trouble,” Alvarez told the
Los Angeles Times
. “They weren’t ready to make the commitment. One by one, they knocked on the door.”

The Rose Bowl was pretty far from Alvarez’s mind back then. “I kept telling myself to be patient,” he said. In 1991 and 1992, Wisconsin went 5-6. Then, in 1993, the Badgers went 9-1-1 and landed in the Rose Bowl, where they defeated UCLA and finished the year ranked ninth in the nation.

Leach put down the Alvarez article. He knew one thing: Bill Moos had his back. That was something he never felt at Tech.

Kickoff was about an hour away. UCLA and WSU players were warming up on the field. ESPN cameramen were in position. Despite the twenty-degree
temperature, students were already filling the seats behind WSU’s bench. Leach was pacing, watching his quarterbacks try to get warm.

Moos was taking it all in from his skybox. UCLA was 7-2 and heavily favored. But Moos had an odd feeling as he looked down on the field: WSU was going to give the Bruins a run for their money.

Then one of his staff members entered the suite with some news: Marquess Wilson had just released a letter to the media. Moos read it.

Moos stopped reading. “Judas priest!” he said.

Claims of abuse from a disgruntled fourth-string player’s father through a confidential e-mail were one thing. An open letter to the media from the team’s biggest star was another thing altogether. Moos knew what this meant: the shit was about to hit the fan.

It already had. He had barely finished reading Wilson’s letter when he got a text from ESPN’s sideline reporter. She wanted his reaction to Wilson’s claims. Then his phone vibrated. The call was coming from an AP reporter. Moos ignored them both, turning instead to his assistant. “We’ve gotta get word to Mike,” he said. “Find Super Dave. Have him meet me in my office.”

As director of football operations, Dave Emerick was crazy busy on game days. He walked around with a clipboard containing a minute-by-minute breakdown of where players and coaches were supposed to be. When he wasn’t directing traffic, Emerick was usually one step behind Leach, ready to respond to any last-minute situations that arose. That’s where he was when an associate athletic director told him to report to Moos’s office at once.

When Emerick reached the AD’s office, Moos was handwriting an official statement for the media. He briefed Emerick on the Wilson situation.

Used to the storms that always seemed to be circling Leach, Emerick just raised his eyebrows. It took a lot to rattle him.

“You gotta let Mike know,” Moos told Emerick. “This is a nationally televised game. Sideline reporters will grab him. I don’t want him to be blindsided.”

Emerick reached Leach just before he left the field to return to the locker room for final pregame preparations. Leach was stoic when he heard that Wilson had quit and accused him of abuse. “Yeah, well …” Leach said, his voice trailing off. There was a game to coach. Minutes later he was standing in the locker room, surrounded by players. “Everybody, up,” he said.

By the time the game started, the headline on ESPN.com read “Marquess Wilson Targets Coach.” The story led with excerpts from Wilson’s letter. It also contained a portion of Moos’s statement in response: “I believe I join
many Cougars in wishing Marquess well in his future endeavors. We have procedures in place that were developed to monitor student-athlete welfare in all of our sports programs. We will continue to follow those procedures and modify them as needed.”

Between ESPN and AP, the story was everywhere. Less than two hours after Wilson released his letter, it was being tweeted and shared on social media Web sites.

Elson Floyd often entertained in his private box at home games. For the UCLA game he was hosting Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott. It was Scott’s first visit to Pullman since Leach had been hired and the new stadium renovations had been completed. Floyd was showing Scott around the president’s suite when he got the call from Moos informing him about Wilson. The minute he hung up, Floyd excused himself from Scott and stepped into his private conference room in the corner of the suite.

While Scott took in the game, Floyd read the online stories about Wilson’s departure. He also read Moos’s official statement. It was clear WSU had a full-fledged PR disaster on its hands. He sat there, trying to figure out what to do.