Well, here's some breaking news, as I'm listening to Sports Radio 950 KJR AM right now, as David Locke and his producers are putting the pieces of the story together:
1) Mike Price, head coach of the WSU Cougs football team, is leaving for the vacant Alabama position.
2) He is adamant about, and it is apparently part of the deal, the he will coach the Rose Bowl for WSU, Jan 1, vs. Oklahoma
3) Top assistant Bill Doba will be named the new head coach for WSU tomorrow
4) He had a players-only meeting this afternoon, where he made these announcements to the team. Jason Gesser was seen leaving the room in tears (even though the Rose Bowl will be his final game for WSU, who can blame him?)

As someone who roots for the WSU football team, I can't Begin to express how crushingly disappointing this news is. Mike Price IS the Cougs. Even though Dennis Erickson had a couple decent years (before departing for Miami) before Price, Price Built this team form a perennial laughing-stock, and basement-dweller in the PAC-10, to a team making its second Rose Bowl in 5 years, and consecutive 10-win teams. He comes from an-in state high-school football factory that existed in Everett 30-40 years ago, emerging from a system that produced Dennis Erickson, and Keith Gilbertson (now a Husky assistant, and widely known as a top offensive innovator). Those three have played as big a part as Anybody in developing the wide-open, passing oriented, dynamic, spread-the field passing offenses that have become all the rage in college and NFL football. No one regularly ran the 5-wide set before Price at WSU, something you now see as a part of almost everyone's offense.

If you had come to me anytime before the last couple days, i would have bet Anything that Price would Never leave WSU. I'm pretty fucking surprised, to say the least.

As a coach, Mike Price regularly did more with less than just about any coach in the country. A lot of people may only remember the many 3 and 4-win seasons, and there were certainly a few of them, but could You get Anyone to go to Pullman?!!! This guy won two PAC-10 titles, and got to a handful of 2nd-teir bowl games, playing with half the deck of UW, Oregon, UCLA, USC, or Arizona schools.