Greg Hansen: 'Mr. Football' on Jayden de Laura's Heisman chances, WSU's reputation — and Saturday's winner

Dear Mr. Football: Is Washington State’s football brand more well-known than Arizona’s?

A: In the last two months, WSU has benefited like never before from a prolific ESPN commercial — “The Cougar Who Won’t Quit” — in which Cougars alumnus Tom Pounds explains how the WSU flag has flown at 284 consecutive ESPN “College GameDay” telecasts.

I’ve seen the commercial at least 50 times, maybe more. It’s on the run- and rerun-cycle. Pounds has put WSU football on the map. Advertising executives would have fun putting a value on those ESPN/WSU commercials. How much? Let’s say it’s far more than the $27 million WSU is spending to build a new indoor sports arena.

Pounds, from the WSU Class of 1981, is a science teacher in small-town Milan, New Mexico, smack in the middle of nowhere between Albuquerque and Gallup.

Dear Mr. Football: Does WSU pay its football players more, via NIL legislation, than Arizona pays the Wildcats?

A: NIL payments are not required to be made public, so we’ll never know. I think we’d be floored if we found out how much Arizona quarterback Jayden de Laura receives. My guess: north of $50,000.

WSU quarterback Cameron Ward, however, has received considerable media coverage for his NIL deal. A Washington auto dealership has given Ward the use of an oversized GMC pickup for the remainder of his Cougars career. A property manager in Pullman has given Ward the use of a four-bedroom home.

Various media outlets have estimated Ward’s NIL deal worth about $90,000.

Whatever Ward and de Laura are being paid is probably under market value for their production. Ohio State coach Ryan Day has estimated that top quarterbacks require $2 million in NIL money. Ward and de Laura both fit that description.

Dear Mr. Football: Is Arizona going to be able to continue its bountiful recruiting haul from Anaheim’s Servite High School?

A: Hard to believe, but the school from which Jedd Fisch recruited coveted UA freshmen Tetairoa McMillan, Noah Fifita, Jacob Manu and Keyan Burnett has gone belly-up.

Servite is 1-9 this season and parted ways with coach Troy Taylor this week. Servite has been outscored 373-133.

Dear Mr. Football: How has de Laura’s alma mater, Honolulu’s Saint Louis High School, done since he graduated?

A: It has had a similar plunge. With de Laura as its QB in 2018 and 2019, Saint Louis went 23-1. The last two seasons it has gone 10-10.

Per capita, Honolulu is a recruiting hotspot to match Texas and other SEC areas. The greater Honolulu area has a population of about 900,000, a bit smaller than the Tucson metro area. But de Laura’s Class of 2020 in Honolulu produced players who went on to play at Notre Dame, Stanford, Oregon, Wisconsin, Cal, Oregon State, BYU, Boise State, Utah, UCLA and Michigan.

Of the entire group, de Laura has been the most successful in college, although it would be close with Wisconsin linebacker Nick Herbig, who is a team captain with 129 career tackles.

Dear Mr. Football: Who has been the better football school since WSU and Arizona became Pac-10 partners 44 years ago?

A: Over the total period, Arizona has won 161 conference games. WSU: 149.

But between the lines the Cougars have received more attention, which doesn’t reflect well on Arizona.

Amazingly, WSU has had the Pac-12 Coach of the Year eight times: Jim Walden (twice), Dennis Erickson, Mike Price (twice), Bill Doba and Mike Leach (twice). Arizona? One, Dick Tomey in 1992.

That can be explained: When the win-starved Cougars would have a promising season, the league seemed to give that more value than coaching a league champion. Such were the cases with Doba, Walden, Erickson and Leach.

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If the same criteria is used this year, Fisch will get some votes — especially if Arizona splits or sweeps its final two games. That’s a big if.

The biggest difference between football operations at Arizona and WSU occurred since the league expanded to 12 teams in 2011. Since then WSU has clearly been the superior football program, producing 13 first-team all-conference players to Arizona’s six.

Dear Mr. Football: What enabled WSU to leapfrog Arizona as a football school?

A: In retrospect, the turning point was when former Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne hired Rich Rodriguez over Mike Leach in the fall of 2011.

WSU is 48-53 in conference games since; Arizona 35-67. That’s inexcusable. It’s a direct reflection on the poor recruiting/community outreach of RichRod and zero-sum career of Kevin Sumlin.

What makes it even worse is that in the fall of 2011, WSU was coming off consecutive wipeout seasons of 2-10, 1-11 and 2-11. If someone had told you 11 years ago that Washington State would soon be a superior football program to Arizona, it would have drawn laughs.

Dear Mr. Football: What does Arizona’s football program need to do in the next decade?

A: It needs to become superior to Washington State. That’s a baseline goal. Arizona has advantages in location, climate, finances and proximity to recruits.

But historically, WSU has forever received more positive public attention because it has produced seven first-team All-Pac-12 quarterbacks: Jack Thompson, Mark Rypien, Drew Bledsoe, Ryan Leaf, Jason Gesser, Nick Falk and Gardner Minshew.

Arizona? None (sob).

Worse, Washington State has gone to two Rose Bowls. Arizona? None (sob times two).

Dear Mr. Football: Whatever happened to de Laura’s offensive coordinator at WSU?

A: One of the reasons de Laura signed with WSU was because of Leach’s reputation and offense, the Air Raid, and because he subsequently became close with offensive coordinator Craig Stutzmann.

Alas, Stutzmann was fired with head coach Nick Rolovich in midseason 2021 when both refused to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Stutzmann has since found work as the offensive coordinator at small-school Utah Tech. Talk about a career drop. (Stutzmann is on the same coaching staff with ex-Sunnyside High School all-state running back Michael Smith, now Utah Tech’s secondary coach).

Stutzmann and his brother, Billy Ray, who is Utah Tech’s receivers coach, are among the main reasons de Laura thrived at WSU. Both coached/played at de Laura’s alma mater, Saint Louis High School. In fact, Billy Ray Stutzmann was the leading receiver at Saint Louis when its QB was future Oregon Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota.

Dear Mr. Football: Can de Laura win the Heisman if he stays at Arizona for two more seasons?

A: The odds of that are unfathomable. The competition is too intense. But if de Laura continues to play the way he has in his first 10 games at Arizona — if he stays healthy — he could become UA’s first-ever All-Pac-12 quarterback and Arizona should have its first winning season since forever by this time next year.

Or maybe it can do so this year, if the Wildcats beat WSU and follow it by whipping ASU in the Territorial Cup and then winning a bowl game.

Dream on, right? But UA fans should be able to dream for at least another week.

Arizona 31, Washington State 27.