Home is where the money is

By Fred Guzman
ESPN550.com

Times, as we all know, are tough. Everyone is trying to save a buck wherever and whenever we can – even at the Division-I-A level.

That's why Washington State will take almost as long to travel to its "home" football team this week as their guests from Hawaii.

For frequent flyer purposes, UH took a 2,679-mile trip to Seattle yesterday that required 5.5 hours to complete.

By comparison, the Cougars will be on the road for about 5 hours to to complete the 288-mile cross-state bus trip from Pullman to Seattle's Qwest field, site of Saturday's non-conference game.

Washington State will also be taking the bus for its Nov. 28 showdown against arch-rival Washington for the Apple Cup game.

Busing saves the school about $40,000 per trip as the athletic department seeks to make up for a decrease of $350,000 in state funding. In fact, Cougars' athletic teams will take ground transportation for all competitions within 400 miles of campus.

Wazzou began playing one game a season in Seattle seven years ago as a way of attracting support from the estimated 60,000 alumni residing in the Western part of the state.

The strategy appears to be working. Although the Cougars are coming off a 2-10 season and were soundly beaten, 39-13, by Stanford in the their real home-opener last week, a crowd of 45,000 is expected to cheer on Wazzou at Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks.

BIG CHANGE: In the wake of a frankly unimpressive debut, some changes have taken place with the University of Hawaii football team.

Most notable among them is a decision – voluntary, we are told – by offensive coordinator Ron Lee to yield the play-calling duties to quarterbacks coach Nick Rolovich.

Lee will continue to coordinate practices and run the offensive meetings, but on game day he will concentrate on coaching the receivers from his perch in the press box while Rolovich, a successful quarterback in this system, will call the offensive plays.

UH is coming off a 25-20 comeback home win over Central Arkansas last Friday night and opens a stretch of three road games over the next four weeks, beginning with Saturday's game against Washington State.

________________________________________________________________
Sent via the WebMail system at mail.pacificradiogroup.com