Jack Thompson came away from a recent visit to Pullman with two big takeaways: the new Cougar football locker room is first-class, and Cougar fans still have plenty of room to leave their mark on it.
Thompson was in town for the CougsFirst! QB Classic and toured the football team’s newly renovated locker room with other celebrity golfers.
The facility, he said, is impressive on its own. What really caught his eye was the personal touch built into it.
“Seeing all those people visibly honored like that just screamed out Cougar spirit,” he said.
More than 70 of the new lockers already carry plaques recognizing the donors who helped pay for the remodel. That still leaves close to 50 of the 120 lockers available for naming, at a cost of $25,000 each, with payment allowed over time.
The locker room itself is fully funded, but WSU’s Rally Your Region campaign for Kirby Moore’s football excellence fund is still pushing forward. Launched in February, the effort has reached $1.7 million, and that total does not include the $25,000 Thompson and his wife, Molly, recently added, which earned them naming recognition on one of the lockers.
The money going into the football excellence fund is tied directly to revenue sharing, a piece of the modern college sports landscape that WSU sees as essential for keeping and attracting players. Each sport at WSU has its own excellence fund, all of them housed under the Cougar Athletic Fund.
That CAF link matters because donations are tax-deductible and also eligible for corporate matching.
Rally Your Region also comes with a $500,000 matching challenge from a group of donors, unlocked in stages as fundraising milestones are hit. WSU says it is the largest public matching campaign in school athletics history. It also stands out because it turns the fundraising race into a regional competition across five areas.
The current totals and commitments are:
- Northwest Washington Region: $747,000
- Cougs Everywhere Out of State: $417,000
- Northeast Washington/North Idaho: $261,000
- Southwest Washington/Portland: $174,000
- Southeast Washington: $122,000
“Every amount helps, be it $50 or the $25,000 that will get you a naming opportunity in the locker room,” said Thompson. “With 250,000 living alums, Cougar Nation is in position to be one of the heavyweights in the new Pac-12, and not just in football. If we come together in support of athletics, our teams will compete for titles, and the ripple effect of success to the broader university is massive because it will spark greater applications and enrollment at a time when the 'enrollment cliff'' is hitting all universities.”
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The news arrived through a team video on Twitter, and it carries the kind of meaning that goes beyond the depth chart. For a roster that leans on development and buy-in, honoring players who kept showing up and earning trust year after year is a reminder of what the program wants to reward, even as the bigger football questions keep building around the Cougs. [Read more 🡒]