It’s time to accept who we are.
Wayshawn Parker announced this week that he’ll be entering the transfer portal when it opens on Dec. 9. His announcement wasn’t much of a surprise, as there were hints in a preseason report alluding to this day coming eventually.
The next player everyone assumes will enter the portal is quarterback and Mr. Do Everything on Offense, John Mateer. There are rumors that he’s already been offered a seven-figure payday to play elsewhere. There are safer assumptions that he’d naturally try and cash in on his outstanding season and try his trade at a Power 4 school. His offensive coordinator just did the same. So, naturally, it seems everyone is just waiting for Mateer’s fancy social media announcement.
For what it’s worth, Jake Dickert is optimistic the program has done enough to keep Mateer in Pullman:
“We’ve done an amazing job of putting together a package for John that I think is fair, and he knows his value here,” Dickert said. “He knows how much he’s loved. I think it really means something for him to be here. I don’t take that for granted. I also take a step back and wanna mentor him, wanna help him, wanna navigate him through this. The talks have been really, really positive, and we’ll continue to navigate that as they go.”
WSU, or its NIL supporters, put together a package to lure Cam Ward to Pullman once upon a time. But it still wasn’t enough to keep him this season.
For better or worse, that’s the reality we’re in. It’s easy to go through the five stages of grief on this, but I recommend jumping all the way to acceptance. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s my years of following WSU athletics—and specifically football—experiencing incredible highs and mind-numbing lows. I’ve accepted this new reality: WSU is no longer a power athletics program. It’s a mid-major and simply a farm system for bigger schools in bigger cities in bigger conferences with bigger donor bases. There’s nothing you or I can do to change it, and getting angry, upset and depressed won’t change a thing.
Life is a lot easier to navigate when you accept the fact that you have very little control. You can control your response to things, and that’s about it. I can’t control whether a WSU donor ponies up millions of dollars to keep Mateer from bolting to Oklahoma or Texas A&M, or whatever Power 4 school needs a quarterback with two years of eligibility left. But I can control how I react and and my outlook.
In my younger years, before I was even in college, the drives home after football losses were mostly silent, me stewing in disgust as my dad navigated the highway home wondering how in the world we blew a 21-point lead over UCLA only to lose in overtime.
Among other losses.
Now? I laughed out loud when Mateer threw that interception against Wyoming to end the regular season. Not because it was funny—it wasn’t!—but rather it was my way of shrugging it off. This kind of game has happened before, it happened again, and it’ll happen sometime down the road. That’s life when you put so much emotion into the abilities of college kids.
This is the reality now, whether you like it or not. WSU is what it is and is located where it’s located. There’s nothing wrong with any of that: any alum will tell you how amazing it was being in Pullman and that the Palouse country is beautiful. And they’re all correct.
It’s a fantastic school with awesome opportunities for young people from all corners of the state. But when it comes to athletics, it’s not what it used to be.
Accept it or go crazy fuming about it.
Go Cougs.