Jul. 4—PULLMAN — Years later, Bud Nameck still cracks up when he tells the story.
This was years ago, when he was hosting a TV show called Monday Night Quarterback with Jim Walden, the former legendary Washington State football coach who had since pivoted to broadcasting in the area.
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During one episode of the show, which aired in the fall after Monday Night Football, Nameck was hosting a segment where he put on a pair of pads for some comic relief. Walden started to lightly rough up Nameck’s pads, jostling around with a longtime friend. That’s when Nameck offered a quick zinger.
“Hey, Jim,” Nameck said to Walden, “I’ve still got a year of eligibility left.”
“He just started chuckling,” Nameck said. “He goes, ‘And you’re gonna die with it.'”
On Friday, Walden died at the age of 88. He leaves behind a legacy of winning football at WSU, where he worked as head coach from 1978-86, a memorable broadcasting career and so much more, enriching the lives of those around him in the straightforward way he was beloved for.
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To those who knew him best, that kind of story reflects many like it, the kind that show his nature: He was funny and no-nonsense, a winner and a loyalist, a man who could be relied on just the same to win an Apple Cup and to talk your ear off. Loquacious and transformative, Walden is survived by his wife, Nancy, three children, Lisa, Emily and Murray, plus many others.
Walden, who was inducted into WSU’s Hall of Fame in 2009, compiled an overall record of 44-52-4 before moving on to the same job at Iowa State. He was named Pac-10 Coach of the Year in both 1981 and 1983, leading the Cougars to an 8-3-1 record and to the 1981 Holiday Bowl, which at the time was WSU’s first postseason bowl game since the 1931 Rose Bowl.
Those numbers illustrate the winning impact he brought to WSU, which is easy to see. What’s a little harder to find is the other part of what made Walden, well, Walden: the stories and memories from his former players, friends and others.
Here are a few.
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—-It was getting late, so Jack Thompson wanted to call it a night and tackle things tomorrow. The clock had just inched past 11 p.m. on this night in late 1977, when former WSU head coach Warren Powers was considering leaving the program, igniting a whirlwind of chaos in Pullman.
Thompson was on the phone with Walden, who had recently wrapped up his first season as a Cougars assistant, working as offensive coordinator. That aligned him closely with Thompson, widely considered the greatest player in WSU history, a quarterback so prolific he earned the nickname The Throwin’ Samoan.
But with the potential of seismic change on the horizon, Walden was in no mood for nicknames. After Thompson heard from then-president Glen Terrell that Powers had decided to leave, he relayed the information to Walden, who wanted to chat with Thompson.
“I said, well, let’s get together in the morning,” Thompson said over the phone.
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“No, now,” Walden replied.
The two arranged to meet at the St. Thomas More Catholic Church, only for Walden to change his mind when they arrived. So they headed to Moscow, where they sat in a 24-hour diner, chatting about what this change meant for WSU. Thompson was about to have a fourth head coach in four years. He was getting interest from NFL teams. And because Walden favored a balanced approach on offense, instead of the pass-happy system Thompson thrived in, the phenom quarterback was all but ready to call it a career in Pullman.
“I was looking at it logically,” Thompson said. “Maybe it’s time for me to go pro.”
So from about 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., the two men sat in the diner and chatted. Walden pitched him on his place in the next season’s offense, that Thompson would figure prominently, that he would be able to unleash the passing skills that cemented his legacy at WSU.
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“My overriding thing with him was that, I would not back you if this was a one-and-done. You do that, you’ll kill our program,” Thompson said, referring to previous coaches Powers and Jackie Sherrill, both of whom spent one season as the Cougs’ head coach. “He swore up and down that wasn’t gonna happen, that he was a man of his word. He was that when he was my assistant coach, the offensive coordinator. I got to know him as a person, and after we talked, for me, it mitigated that the itch that I had to go pro.
“Because I was pissed off. I was really pissed off at all these coaches that came and promised this and promised that, then they’d bolt. I took a very sarcastic look at guys who were becoming head coaches. They’re just saying anything to get the job, and meanwhile, our school suffered.”
Thompson may have spent only one season with Walden as his head coach, but he didn’t need that much time to come to his conclusion: “His word was true,” Thompson said.
“If there’s anything I can vouch for him, it’s just that. He said he would stay, and he would create a culture,” Thompson said. “Ultimately, that convinced me to stay my senior year. We both had growing pains, frankly. It was his first head coaching job, and he was my third coach in three years, but the saving grace was that he was my offensive coordinator, so I knew what to expect offense-wise. He was true to his work, and he implemented a really great culture, and you see it in the love that players have for him.”
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—-Another Walden memory comes from WSU Hall of Fame quarterback Mark Rypien, who played for the Cougars from 1981-85, going on to become a first-round NFL Draft pick and win a Super Bowl with the Washington Redskins. One morning in Pullman, Rypien remembers, Walden opted against a regular practice. Instead, before the sun came up, Walden gave players another task entirely.
He gave each player a handful of crimson-colored bumper stickers adorned with “Go Cougs.” His instructions: Go around campus and slap them on cars. In Walden’s eyes, it was an opportunity to promote school spirit, especially as he worked to move WSU’s home Apple Cup games from Spokane to Pullman.
So Rypien and teammates waded through campus that morning, attaching bumper stickers to cars, moving onto the next lot when they had finished. That lasted some time until the Cougars got an unexpected visitor: campus police. The team called off their mission. “They said,” Rypien said, “as much as we understand the pride part of it, Coach, these are people’s private property, and you’re putting bumper stickers on their property.”
“So that was always something I thought was kinda fun. But it just showed you how much he valued Cougar football, or when he went to Iowa State. No matter where he went, he brought that great value of playing for your program.”
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—-While we’re on the topic, Walden’s work to move WSU’s home Apple Cup games back to Pullman should not go understated. With the exception of one year, from 1950 through 1980, the Cougars’ home games in the series were played in Spokane at Joe Albi Stadium. Walden’s Cougs played only two in Spokane before Walden used his sway to move home games back to Pullman.
Since then, WSU has only played home games in Pullman.
“As much as Spokane was a great place to have games, that wasn’t home for us,” WSU Hall of Fame safety Paul Sorensen said. “You think Washington would play in Olympia, or go up to Everett to have a rivalry football game and do that for 25 years? No. He basically put that on his back, and that was one of the things that he demanded the next year.”
Sorensen also remembers his first days in a Cougar uniform, which he wore for the 1980 and 1981 seasons. He had recently transferred from Diablo Valley College, and he knew he only had two seasons to establish himself and earn a meaningful role at WSU. So in the opening days of the Cougars’ 1980 fall camp, Sorensen used his physical style to make some vicious tackles, “had a pick, blew up a couple wide receivers,” in his own words.
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Shortly after that practice, Walden approached Sorensen with this advice: “Paul, I really appreciate what you’re doing, how aggressive you’re playing, and we love your competitiveness. But you gotta stop knocking our guys out.”
“Well, Coach, I’m trying to make the team,” Sorensen replied.
“Uh, you’re starting. That’s pretty good,” Walden said.
Then Walden added this: “Those guys are your teammates. If you blow another guy up or cheap-shot a guy or hit a guy out of bounds, that’s your scholarship.”
That hit Sorensen like a Mack truck. He had worked so hard to escape the junior college ranks and earn a scholarship at an FBS school. Was he about to lose it? Walden encouraged Sorensen to keep up his physical tackling — “but do it in a way that’s positive for the team,” Walden said. “So don’t lose your competitiveness and aggressiveness, but be smart about it.”
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“I thought that really resonated, it really did,” said Sorensen, who went on to total 149 tackles and 5 interceptions, earning first-team All-America honors. “It made a difference in terms of how I played that position, and that move from corner to safety my junior year was absolutely a huge deal for my career. That’s the kind of thing that Jim saw. He was able to put pieces together like that.”
—-That was one of Walden’s talents, finding the right pieces and finding the right way to put them together. Some of his best players went on to enjoy fruitful NFL careers, from Thompson and Rypien to Keith Millard and Rueben Mayes, the latter of whom played a combined 15 years of pro ball. The consensus around Walden: He felt tremendously proud of all those types of guys.
“But he was as proud of other guys like Charlie Flager, who’s a Spokane guy that Jim recruited and played for Jim,” Nameck said. “He’s a long-standing insurance guy here in town and has had great success. Cedric Brown, who played with him, was a kid he recruited out of the Compton area in LA, and Cedric played a little bit in the NFL for the Eagles, and now is a pastor in the Philadelphia area. He’s as proud of those guys as he is his NFL guys. Them going on and doing good things in life meant a lot to him.”
All told, among what meant the most to Walden’s players over the years was the simplest part: He stayed. After the Cougars’ two previous coaches bolted after one-year stints, Walden coached nine seasons, guiding WSU to heights the program had never reached before. That set the stage for the national prominence the Cougars have enjoyed since, winning two Pac-10 titles under Mike Price, two more under Mike Leach, with a credible bowl streak following WSU to the present day.
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“He turned down jobs,” Sorensen said. “He had opportunities at Arizona State, Arizona, I think LSU. He had chances to go, and he stayed committed to the Cougs. You’re telling me that (Jake) Dickert and (Jimmy) Rogers and some of those other fellows, if they had those chances, would have turned that down? I don’t think so. We never knew that. That came out after the fact. So I think a lot of this should be attributed to him. The hardest part is building it. It’s tough to sustain it, but it’s hard to get over the hump.
“I think more than anything else, his legacy will be known as really a player’s coach. Hard love, tough love, whatever, but he molded a lot of men and made us better. That’s something I am eternally grateful for. He made me a better man, and not a lot of guys can say that, and I think that’s something you can say about Jim.”
