Coach Is ‘Clever’ This Year : College football: Washington State’s Mike Price has Cougars 6-0 for the first time since 1930, with a game Saturday against USC.

Mike Price, Washington State football coach, once staged a mock shooting during practice before a game against USC, pulling a starter’s pistol from his pocket and “blasting” a Trojan off his horse.

Before a game against Oregon, he dressed as a duck hunter, with shotgun, waders and a sackful of decoys.

During preseason camp every year, he stops practice to have a Popsicle truck backed onto the field, where its cargo is distributed among the players.

Recently, however, Price has curtailed such stunts, or at least kept them from the media.

“I got negative press about it,” he said. “When you’re winning, (people say), ‘Boy, what a clever guy.’ When you’re losing, ‘What an idiot.’ ”

This season, Price could probably get away with anything.

Washington State, which will play USC on Saturday at the Coliseum, is 6-0 for the first time since 1930, when the Cougars were 9-0 before losing to Alabama, 24-0, in their last Rose Bowl appearance.

The Cougars are ranked 13th, their highest ranking since 1958.

Led by Drew Bledsoe, considered by many pro scouts to be the top quarterback prospect in college football, Washington State leads the Pacific 10 Conference with averages of 451.8 yards, 26.2 first downs and 33.8 points.

And the Cougar defense, long a soft touch, played well enough to inspire chants in Martin Stadium during last Saturday’s 30-17 victory over UCLA.

After giving up an average of 441.5 yards last season and ranking last in the Pac-10 in total defense, Washington State has yielded 280.3 this season.

The Cougars rank only seventh in the Pac-10 in total defense, but they are 13th in the nation.

“We’re pumped,” Price said. “This is very exciting.”

This has easily been the most enjoyable of Price’s four seasons as the Cougars’ head coach, and not only for the obvious reasons.

A former player and assistant coach at Washington State--his daughter and two sons were all born in Pullman--Price twice lost out after applying for the head coaching position before landing his dream job in 1989.

But when he finally got it, Price, 46, was the Cougars’ third coach in four seasons.

With players recruited by his predecessors, Jim Walden and Dennis Erickson, along with his own recruits, Price was unable to form a cohesive team.

“It was hard because the team hadn’t adjusted to the coaching change,” said Price’s son, Aaron, the Cougars’ kicker. “It was many different teams on the same team. There were a lot of individuals, and the older players didn’t want to (adjust) to the new style of coaching.”

The Cougars were 6-1 in Price’s first season before losing their last four games. They were 3-8 in 1990.

“The 3-8 year was very tough,” Price said. “We had some controversies because I started Drew (then a freshman) at quarterback and it kind of split the team about three different ways. Our kids weren’t mature enough to handle it and I couldn’t get them to be a team again. Therefore, we did not play well.”

Price said the team’s attitude improved greatly last season, when the Cougars were 4-7.

“We only won one more game, but we made great strides,” he said.

This season, Cougar fans are talking about a bowl appearance, which would be only the third by Washington State since 1930.

But the superstitious Price won’t hear of such talk.

When a reporter asked him about it this week, he feigned a communications breakdown.

“Something wrong with this phone?” he asked during a conference call. “I can’t hear you.”

Some, including Bledsoe, said that Price’s job would have been in jeopardy if the Cougars had not shown vast improvement this season.

But Athletic Director Jim Livengood, who has known Price since 1966, said that wasn’t the case. He said that Price, in the fourth year of a five-year contract, probably will be offered an extension before next season.

When Livengood hired Price to succeed Erickson, he said, “Mike Price is a perfect fit for Washington State and Washington State is a perfect fit for Mike Price.”

By that, he meant that Price met the criteria Livengood had established in looking for a new coach after Erickson, Price’s best friend at Everett High, had left for Miami after only two seasons in Pullman.

He knew the area. He wouldn’t use Washington State as a steppingstone. He ran a passing attack. And, after compiling a 46-44 record in eight seasons at Weber State, he had head coaching experience.

“I’m not saying he’d be the right fit for every job, but for our job, he was a perfect fit,” Livengood said.

And if Washington State has been good to Price, Price has been good to Washington State.

The secret to his success?

“I think it’s mainly our recruiting,” he said. “Even though we’ve got a reputation for being an offensive school and have a great quarterback, we still have recruited for defensive players and recruited mainly for speed on defense, and it’s paying off.”

The combined record of the Cougars’ first six opponents is only 13-24-2, and still ahead are games against USC, Stanford and Washington, so a Rose Bowl appearance is a longshot.

How about a lesser bowl?

“I can’t hear you,” Price said. “The phone must be going out. Goshdang it. I’m sorry.”