Where do the Cougars go after shocking loss to Portland State?

WSU lost to Portland State despite being 31-point favorites and beating the same team by 38 last year. (AP)

Wouldn’t you know it, one day after I wrote that I’d support Mike Leach no matter what this season, the Cougars suffer their worst loss in the history of the Washington State football program.

I guess that’s debatable, but in the 42 years I’ve been following the Cougs, I can’t remember a worse loss than the 24-17 defeat to Portland State Saturday at Martin Stadium.

On our side of things, Leach said this is the best team he’s had in his four years in Pullman. We were playing at home. We had the vastly superior team according to oddsmakers who listed us as 31-point favorites. We beat this team by 38 points last year.

On their side of things, Portland State is a team that fired its coach and is playing this season under an interim coach. The Vikings had never beaten a Pac-12 team.

Yet there they were, rallying from 10-0 halftime deficit, outplaying and outhustling the Cougs. Until Peyton Bender was intercepted in the final minute, I thought we’d find a way to slop out a win.

Now what?

According to a story on CougCenter.com, Leach’s contract runs through 2019, and if he’s fired at the end of the year, a buyout would cost Washington State $4.8 million. That would pay for a lot of margaritas in Key West, where the Cougars found Leach when they hired him to replace Paul Wulff four years ago.

So the thought is it would be too costly to fire him, but you could argue that it’s crazy at this point to keep him too. Couldn’t you hire Eastern Washington’s Beau Baldwin or Portland State’s Bruce Barnum for $500,000 a season and take your chances on an unproven Division I coach with promises of a better contract in a few years?

But wait a minute, I’m just throwing that out there – I said I’m going to see this season through and, besides, athletic director Bill Moos hired Leach and won’t consider replacing him unless we go 2-10 or worse this season.

That’s just an opinion, no one’s told me anything, but if we went 3-9 or 4-8 and offered a glimmer of hope with an upset of say, Arizona, coupled with the cost of the buyout, I’ll bet that Leach will get a fifth year.

If you’re capable of losing to Portland State at home, you’re certainly capable of running the table like the Huskies did during their winless season in 2008.

But let’s look at the more optimistic side of it, what little there is right now. The Cougars play Rutgers on Saturday and are only two-point underdogs. Rutgers has a coach who’s under fire and five players who were dismissed from the team for off-field violations.

Though Washington State has to travel cross-country to face the Scarlet Knights, it’s still basically a toss-up game. If the Cougars could use the embarrassment from the Portland State loss as motivation, maybe they beat Rutgers and return home to face a Wyoming team that lost to North Dakota 24-13 last Saturday. If you lose to North Dakota, how good can you be?

So even though 0-12 is still in play for the Cougs, 2-1 is too, and if Washington State wins its next two games, it will be a good start in the healing process from the Portland State game.

The Go 2 Guy also writes for SeattlePi.com and KitsapSun.com. You can reach Jim at jimmoorethego2guy@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @cougsgo.