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Price should watch Rose Bowl from Tuscaloosa hotel room We all make choices and live with the consequences. Even popular college football coaches. Mike Price made the decision to leave Washington State to coach at Alabama. Fine. Great. Wonderful. He deserves the opportunity. Good luck. Roll Tide. That decision having been made, Price does not belong on the WSU sidelines when the Cougars play Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1. He's now the coach of Alabama and the Alabama coach simply does not belong on the WSU sidelines. Otherwise, it all becomes very confusing and a situation not good for either WSU or Alabama. It has already been announced that Price's first television show will be shown all over the South beginning Sunday. What's he going to talk about? WSU's preparations for the Rose Bowl? Just imagine Price reciting one of his most common and recurring WSU pep talks during the Rose Bowl game: C'mon boys, keep fighting. We're a family here at Washington State and we fight like Cougars because once you become a Cougar, you're always a Cougar. You will always bleed crimson, with a generous touch of gray. Price is famous for those kind of quaint aphorisms. Now, in light of his decision, they smack of hypocrisy. Coaching is about relationships and building a team. Relationships involve trust. That trust has now been irrevocably broken. Besides that, having Price on the sidelines is a textbook definition of conflict of interest. One reason Price needed to make the announcement before the Rose Bowl was because this is prime recruiting time. To wait would have put Alabama at a disadvantage as the best football players in the land make their choices. How can Price recruit for Alabama if he's locked in strategy meetings in a luxury hotel in Coeur d'Alene or Los Angeles? How can Price be talking up the Tide when he's convincing Cougs this move is best for him and best for Doba? If ABC-TV hones in on Price, is he going to mug the camera and give thanks to Bear Bryant? And how can Doba assume command when the former commander in chief is standing alongside? It doesn't matter whether Price has an eyebrow raised or not; it's simply an impossible situation for a new coach to be in. And what if Doba wants one play and Price wants another? What if Doba says go on fourth-and-one and Price says punt? Maybe WSU should request an extra timeout just to sort things out and make things even. It's never a good idea to keep one eye on the past when peering into the future. The only thing that suffers will be the now, which just so happens to be only WSU's second trip to the Rose Bowl in 67 years. So as the team heads to the Coeur d'Alene resort after finals and before traveling to Los Angeles on Monday, the Cougs should have a big sendoff banquet for Price, share the successes over the last 14 seasons and see him onto a plane for Tuscaloosa. Having Price around will be a major distraction and put the spotlight more on Alabama than a WSU team that deserves the attention by winning the Pac-10 championship. Thanks for the offer, Mike, but WSU will have its hands full trying to beat a very good Oklahoma team. Enjoy the game on television from a motel room in Tuscaloosa, the city where you are now employed. We'll send you a souvenir. | ||||||||||
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