Price is wrong

WSU coach doesn't know what he's getting into at 'Bama

Poor, poor Mike Price.

Not literally, obviously -- the man's about to become a multimillionaire. In all other areas, though, this just seems so wrong you can't help but feel icky.

It's easy to understand why Alabama would be interested in Price, a fine coach and outstanding gentleman. It's also easy to understand why Price, 56, would be interested in 'Bama, one of the absolute meccas in his profession, after achieving basically everything there is to achieve at his current locale. It's not like a lot of suitors had been beating down his door before this year.

But it's absolutely baffling that both sides went through with it. Mike Price and Alabama are about as natural a fit as Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart.

Price is as laid-back as he is successful, a man whose roots are almost entirely entrenched in the West and whose specialty is molding championship-caliber teams around less-recruited players. In his 14 years on the Palouse he embraced Washington State's rural setting, openly mocking rival Oregon's big-city ambitions last summer with his idea to plaster a poster of QB Jason Gesser on the side of a grain silo in tiny Dusty, Wash.

The poster's wit was typical of Price, whose sense of humor is easily tops among Division I-A head coaches. Unfortunately, he's now headed to the one place where football is considered anything but funny.

There's absolutely no way for anyone from outside the state of Alabama to truly understand its attitude toward college football, as Dennis Franchione found out the hard way. The seriousness of the climate is almost impossible to comprehend, the expectations nearly impossible to meet.

And that's when things are going well.

Things will not go particuarly well for Alabama the next few years, no matter who's at the helm. Serious sanctions mean serious scholarship reductions mean serious depth and other problems for the Crimson Tide. That might not bother Price, who's long accustomed to making something out of nothing. But how much will it bother the locals if, like Price's Washington State teams, it takes a while just to achieve consecutive winning seasons?

Fact is, we live in an age where no coach can be expected to achieve the sustained dominance and stability at one school that Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden and, in 'Bama's case, the beloved Bear Bryant once did. If Price spends 14 years in Tuscaloosa like he did Pullman, it'll be nothing short of a miracle.

But that's not going to happen. Not necessarily because of Price but because of 'Bama, which seems terminally stuck in a cycle of chewing up and spitting out another coach every few years. To expect that pattern to suddenly end as the program is about to hit rock bottom is unrealistic.

It's just unfortunate that the next victim has to be someone like Price. In the end, his wealth of dignity could only be trumped by his own natural ambition.

Stewart Mandel covers college football for CNNSI.com.

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