The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (69 page)

By that point, NFL scouts were showing up at BYU practices. They were already very familiar with Van Noy. They were pleased to discover that Van Noy and Ansah were roommates. “Another thing he has going for him is that his roommate is Kyle Van Noy,” one NFL scout said. “He’s living with the other best player on the team. They are best friends. We see that as a good thing. When you’re checking the boxes for what he has going for him, that’s another plus.”

Mendenhall was floored. “If anyone knew where he started, I can’t even articulate the jump he’s made,” he said. “This is a guy who literally didn’t know how to put on his pads. Now he’s projected as a first-round draft pick. We’ve had more NFL personnel in our facility this year than in my previous eight years put together. This is a guy I never took seriously.”

O
n November 1, 2012, President Elson Floyd and the Washington State University Board of Trustees received a disturbing letter via e-mail. It came from the parent of a football player who had recently left the team. “As stewards of WSU you have a responsibility to make sure the athletes are not getting mistreated by their coaches,” the letter began. “I feel that Coach Mike Leach and his staff are out of control.”

The parent named eighteen scholarship players in addition to his son who had left the program since Leach arrived. Player abuse, the parent insisted, was behind the departures. The letter specifically cited “Midnight Maneuvers,” punishing players for missing off-season “voluntary” workouts and forcing players to do drills that were more demanding than those required in military boot camps. In one instance, the letter alleged, offensive linemen were forced to do drills in a sandpit after performing poorly in a game that WSU had lost. “Players were made to hold 45-pound plates over their heads while coaches sprayed water in their faces with water hoses,” the parent wrote, adding that Coach Leach had instructed players not to talk to their parents or the administration if they had concerns about the way the program was being run. “I would expect WSU to investigate these allegations which I know to be true,” the parent continued. “WSU has an obligation to protect these young men.”

Floyd was uneasy. The letter was a scathing indictment of the football coaches. Granted, the claims had come from a parent whose son had no chance of seeing any playing time and ultimately quit the team. Floyd learned that context from athletic director Bill Moos. Still, if only half of his accusations were true, WSU had a problem on its hands. Worse, the letter dredged up reminders of Leach’s infamous departure from Texas Tech. The situation could not be ignored.

But Floyd had no interest in micromanaging the football program. Nor
did he want to undermine his athletic director. Moos had hired Leach. If legitimate questions arose about Leach’s fitness for the job—and the claim that players had been hosed while being forced to carry forty-five-pound plates through a sandpit certainly raised a red flag—Moos was the one who needed to get to the bottom of the situation.

Yet the letter had been addressed directly to Floyd and his board. Some trustees were uncomfortable. The board’s chairman, Scott Carson, had plenty of experience dealing with crises. He had previously been the executive vice president of the Boeing Company, as well as the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. A letter from a student-athlete’s parent alleging abuse had to be taken seriously. In talks with Floyd, Carson recommended a series of steps.

First, the letter required a response from the athletic director.

Second, the letter should be referred to the appropriate board committee for further review and possible action.

Third, the AD needed to brief the board on the situation within the football program.

Floyd passed all of this on to Moos.

When Bill Moos read the parent’s complaint letter, he looked at the situation through the lens of a football coach as well as an athletic director. From that perspective, he knew it was not out of the ordinary to hear complaints from parents—including complaints about their sons’ treatment. Unlike those running the university, Moos had played big-time college football. He knew the sort of discipline and hard-nosed approach required to compete. It is, after all, football, not the glee club. Oregon, USC and UCLA were pushing their players to the brink. If WSU hoped to compete with those teams, players had to be pushed just as hard.

Moos was also pretty familiar with the eighteen players who had already left the program since Leach arrived. Five of them were kicked off the team for breaking the law. “The pot smokers and thieves aren’t going to make it in Leach’s program,” Moos said. “Two of those guys that he cut were linebackers that were NFL caliber.”

The fact that Leach had cut two of his best players for breaking the law was a good sign as far as Moos was concerned. A couple other players were let go due to substandard academic performance. Others quit or were let go due to the stepped-up conditioning and high expectations. All of this, as far as Moos was concerned, was simply part of the process of rebuilding the program. “Anytime you are in transition, you have defections,” he said.

Before speaking with Floyd, Moos called Leach into his office to discuss the letter. Leach was very familiar with the player whose father wrote it. The abuse claims, he said, were ridiculous. But he wasn’t necessarily surprised that the student-athlete’s father had complained. Not every student-athlete is cut out for the rigors of Division I college football.

At the same time, Leach preferred to deal with the situation right away. His team was 2-6 and had dropped five straight in the Pac-12. He was trying to get the team ready to play Utah, one of the few teams on WSU’s schedule that was struggling. WSU was scheduled to fly to Salt Lake City the following day. He had a lot to do to get ready.

“You want me to call him right now?” Leach asked.

Moos liked the idea.

Leach called his former player’s father on the spot. Stunned, the parent spoke his piece. Leach listened and then did the same. After the call, Moos reassured Leach and told him to focus on Utah.

Marquess Wilson was not happy. Two weeks earlier he left the Cal game after taking a hard hit in the end zone. The following week he lost his starting position to a freshman. When Leach announced the starting lineups for the Utah game, Wilson was once again relegated to second string. He still ended up leading the team in receptions and yardage. But Washington State lost to Utah 49–6. WSU’s only score came on the game’s final play, a meaningless five-yard touchdown pass. The loss dropped WSU to 2-7, guaranteeing a losing season and snuffing out any last hope of getting a bowl invitation.

Leach was pissed. Losing was one thing. But playing without heart was another. Above all, Leach valued effort. He didn’t see much of that in Salt Lake City.

“Our effort today was pitiful,” Leach said in his postgame press conference. “Square one is a good effort and our effort was horrible.”

The Utah game was by far the worst loss of the season. WSU had been beaten badly in every facet of the game, especially along the line of scrimmage. The defensive line got pushed around all day. The offensive line gave up six sacks. A reporter asked Leach about the lack of protection for his quarterback.

“A part of it is effort, and some of it borders on cowardice,” Leach said. “It was one of the most heartless efforts up front I’ve ever seen. And our D-line wasn’t any better.”

Typically, reporters get postgame interviews with a couple of players after hearing from the coach. But Leach was in no mood for protocols. He sent out the entire offensive line and defensive line. Battered, humiliated and feeling out of place, the linemen looked blankly at a bank of reporters who were equally unsure about what to say. Finally, questions trickled out.

Defensive end Logan Mayes stepped up. “Everybody on this team works hard,” he said. “We just couldn’t get it done at the end of the day. There’s no lack of want-to on this team. Sometimes you want something really bad and you don’t get it. We’re all going to go back and work our asses off this week and find a way to get it done.”

Senior Travis Long, the team’s best defensive player and its hardest worker, suddenly bolted out of the press conference. He appeared to have tears in his eyes.

The whole scene was surreal. “In four decades of covering the conference, I’ve never seen anything like it,” wrote the
Seattle Times
’s veteran sports columnist Bud Withers.

The atmosphere on the plane ride back from Salt Lake City resembled that of a funeral home. It was late at night by the time the team touched down in Pullman. Leach told his staff not to go home. He wanted to talk to them at the football office.

Tired and in a foul mood, the coaches trudged into a meeting room. Leach vented. The assistants vented. The season had reached a low point. With just three games to go, there was nothing left to play for but pride. But the team had clearly lost its confidence. There was disagreement over how to restore it. The next day was a Sunday, typically a light practice day. The coaching staff decided to scrap practice and put the team through conditioning drills.

The following afternoon, the players were divided into groups and sent to one of four conditioning stations. Marquess Wilson was in the group that started in the sandpit, where players were required to sprint, roll and do bear crawls on hands and feet through forty yards of sand. Wilson didn’t see the point. About fifteen minutes into the session, he walked off the field. He didn’t say a word to the coaches. He had had enough.

Wilson was the best receiver in the school’s history. Yet from the moment Leach arrived, it seemed as if he had been openly critical of Wilson’s effort, suggesting he needed to toughen up and become more of a leader. Wilson didn’t appreciate it. He didn’t take well to some of the physical
demands either, stuff like making receivers run twenty-five hundred yards per practice. Even NFL teams don’t do that. Plus, he had lost his starting position—a move the coaches hoped would send a message to the star player that he needed to pick up his effort.

After Sunday’s practice, Leach discovered that Wilson hadn’t just walked off the practice field. He had cleaned out his locker. The next morning the school announced that its star player had been indefinitely suspended for violating team rules.