But as it turned out — maybe intentionally, maybe not — it was university president Betsy Cantwell who ended up playing the starring role. She said a lot of stuff, which we’ll get to in a minute. But it actually was the last thing that she said that’s got me fired up, because I feel like I’ve waited my entire life as a Coug to hear it.

“We’re all committed to winning, and you all know I’m committed for Washington State University to compete and win,” Cantwell said. “If you remember nothing else about what I think and feel about how we do this in the new and changing athletics world, we will compete, and we will win.”

No excuses? No Little Engine That Could? Just straight calling our shot?

Hell. Yeah.

A big part of the reason Cantwell ended up center stage is because she needed to lay out the case for why the she retained the interim AD — which, of course, is the exact same thing her predecessor did. And I’m not going to lie: When the news broke a couple of weeks ago that Haarlow had gotten the job, I thought the idea of just hiring the interim again was pretty damn lame.

That’s different than the time before, when I actually was fully on board with Anne McCoy’s elevation to AD in the wake of Pat Chun’s cowardly defection to Washington; we were walking into some extremely weird stuff for a couple of years, and a steady hand with deep institutional knowledge made sense to me in that circumstance. When McCoy was later sent on her way and Cantwell used all the usual “national search” bluster that inevitably comes in the immediate wake of a change, my first thought was: Good! Let’s go find the best person!

Then … months dragged on without significant news about the AD search. And it became increasingly clear that the most likely outcome here was Haarlow’s retainer. He seemed to be doing a great job with the outward-facing portion of the job (which, to be truthful, is really all that you and I see and can evaluate him on), but still, there was nothing in me that wanted him to get the job. Nothing against Haarlow, but you simply cannot convince me that in a pool of hundreds and hundreds of athletics directors and assistant directors across the country at the various levels of collegiate athletics, the very best person for the AD job at WSU — two times in a row! — was in house. That just defies probability.

The trick, however, is that you both have to go out and identify that theoretical person and also convince them to come to Pullman. And just as there’s a risk to promoting from within, there’s a risk to bringing someone in from the outside — particularly if you are a leader like Cantwell. Because although a number of things have become abundantly clear about her in her relatively short time as university president, this might be the most significant:

Cantwell is most definitely in charge, and she does not fuck around.

Every president leaves their mark on a university, but folks at WSU tell me that the number of Kirk Schulz initiatives Cantwell has ruthlessly reversed or abandoned or significantly restructured in just over a year is sort of mind blowing. I can’t tell you whether that’s good or bad, but it’s certainly notable. She was brought in to fix a house that was on fire in about 10 different places, and this is her approach.

Which means, if you’re going to work for her? You and your little slice of the school better be 100% aligned with her vision and her plan for the university as a whole.

Again, we can debate whether such a heavy-handed approach is a good or bad leadership strategy, but that’s not really the issue with regards to hiring an AD. What matters in this case is recognizing that this is, in fact, her leadership style — which almost certainly explains why she needed just six months to decide that Schulz’s hire to run athletics had to go, even though McCoy was a Coug for most of her professional life and had just gotten a contract extension and really had not done anything wrong, per se.

There’s just no room for sentiment when the house is on fire. So McCoy was unceremoniously shown the door.

Perhaps the fire in athletics, so to speak, has been brought a bit under control at this point, as we head into the new version of the Pac-12 with a new football coach who already has optimism sky high. But Cantwell is clearly under no illusion that all is yet well. There is still much work to do, and her vision for how to get to the other side of this mess needs to be faithfully executed by someone who sees it the way she does — which she made obviously and plainly clear (italics emphasis mine):

“(Athletics and universities) are in a complete kind of disruption change state,” Cantwell said in her remarks. “So this moment requires us to move faster, make better decisions with less information, rethink models that no longer serve where college athletics are. They serve where college athletics has been, where Coug athletics has been. So we're not going to operate on the basis of outdated assumptions.

“For that reason, Jon Haarlow is the perfect leader for the moment. He brings the ability to lead with clarity and to facilitate change. That's very important. He brings the ability to partner with me. That's very important for this moment at WSU.”

OK! Go on?

“He has a profound understanding of the Pac-12, the national landscape, and where we need to go as a conference. And we'll see more on that coming out this week. He's also just an undying Coug. This guy bleeds crimson and has for a long time since before I got here. So he knows this is not a traditional AD role. He knows the role includes being a tight partner with me and he knows that the role requires him to think like an entrepreneur as much as a disciplined executor. They both have to be in place. Jon has the capacity for both. So Jon and I are aligned on what success requires.”

Three times(!) in there she said how important it was that Haarlow partner with her. She also said it at least one other time in her remarks. It’s not normal at most universities for the president to have this kind of tight involvement in athletics … but these are not normal times, either.

Which is why I’ve come around a bit on the decision to once again promote from within. I still don’t particularly like it philosophically, but if it is that important that the AD be completely, absolutely, 100% aligned with upper campus … well, the only way to be sure you’re getting that is to hire someone you already know.

It’s also worth noting that we’ve seen before just how beneficial that kind of alignment can be. Not that long ago, Elson Floyd and Bill Moos shared a similar vision for athletics between French Ad and Bohler. It prompted a golden era of WSU athletics investment and results that boosted the university as a whole. Cantwell sees a similar symbiotic relationship between the health of athletics and the health of the university.

“We say, and I say, that athletics is the front door of the university,” she said. “What does that mean? Often, athletics is the only way that a lot of people know who we are and what we do. They're not Cougs. They didn't go to school here or they're not in school here now. They don't work here, but they know about us, and they know about us because of our athletics programs, many different sports. That's really, really important to us.

“Athletics is often the first thing that people who do come to us touch about WSU. It's the thing that students touch and hear about. It's the thing that people who want to come be a part of us as employees know about us. It represents who we are in a way that nothing else does.”

It’s impossible to know whether Haarlow will be able to successfully navigate us through this sea change in college athletics. It’s a massive lift, and while the idea that a college administrator needs to “think like an entrepreneur” sounds great, there’s a reason why that’s a very difficult thing to do — and a reason why most endeavors to shake up traditional athletics departments fail spectacularly. There’s a lot of institutional inertia behind college athletics nationwide, and besides: Most successful entrepreneurs do so with a good amount of cash backing to bring their vision to life.¹

And that, of course, is where Haarlow faces a famously uphill battle. But as someone who has been around different parts of WSU for the past five years, he’s under no illusions of what the situation is, and it’s clear he’s already formed the kinds of relationships necessary to boost giving — another mark in his favor. And while he didn’t really say anything all that revolutionary/entrepreneurial during his remarks, he did emphasize some interesting things, even if it was wrapped up in jargon.

“We will be proactive, bold, and aggressive in activating our 250,000 living alumni,” Haarlow said. “These activations must include tickets, and they must include donations, even if just a little bit. It all matters, and it has never mattered more than it matters right now. We'll activate partnerships, NIL opportunities, and fan engagement. We'll do this to ensure Washington State remains visible and competitive in a continually evolving environment.”

At the risk of giving too much weight to business-speak gobbledygook, the repeated mentions of visibility did make me perk up my ears. That is just so, so, so important for a school nestled in a small town in the corner of the state. The loss of the Pac-12 as we knew it begot a tremendous loss of television distribution, which turned the school’s athletics into persona non grata among folks in general, which turned the school itself into an afterthought — not just in terms of athletics, but in terms of recruitment of students in general.

Getting into the new conference is part of solving that, but there’s going to have to be more to it. Which is why this also caught my ear.

“Cougar athletics belongs to all of you. Our fans, our donors, our alumni, our students — we will deepen those relationships,” Haarlow said. “We will win back the student population. We’ll tell our story more effectively. We’ll create experiences that bring people together and strengthen our brand across the region and across the country.

“Washington State University remains a national brand. That’s not going anywhere.”

To me, this actually shows a keen awareness of the ways in which WSU has failed in the past. The money that flowed in from the legacy Pac-12 papered over a lot of problems in this regard, and with that gone, the flawed (nonexistent?) approach to students, fans, and alumni have been embarrassingly exposed. The devil will always be in the details, and it’s easy to say the right things. But approaching this as a marketing task above all else is, to me, the way. Recognizing they’ve lost the students and that they’ve done a poor job of “telling our story” is a great start.

BUT …

It will always come down to results. Gotta win. And Cantwell and Haarlow — together — are doing everything they can to ensure that happens out of the gate while being ready to capitalize when it does.

“This is a pivotal moment,” Haarlow said. “This fall is arguably the most important fall in the history of WSU athletics.”