PULLMAN — The man who turned Washington State University’s football team from an also-ran to a Pacific-10 Conference power was named the league’s top coach for the 1981 season.
Jim Walden, who led WSU to the school’s best season (8-2-1) since 1931 and its first bowl berth (Holiday Bowl) in that same period, was the unanimous choice of his fellow Pac-10 head coaches.
Walden said he was “very flattered” and “thankful to all the people that made it possible.”
But he said the entire team and coaching staff were responsible for the award.
“Without those components, there would not have been any such awards,” he said. “They just have to single out one guy to give the credit to.”
Walden just finished his fourth regular season at WSU this fall. It marked the first time since WSU went 9-0 in 1931 before losing to Alabama in the Rose Bowl that the Cougars had won as many as eight games or been picked to play in a post-season contest.
WSU is scheduled to meet Western Athletic Conference champion Brigham Young University Dec. 18 in the Holiday Bowl at San Diego.
Walden’s team was in the running for the Rose Bowl until the final game of the season when it lost to Washington 23-10 at Seattle. Had the Cougars won they would have played Iowa at Pasadena Jan. 1.
Instead, Washington has that honor.
Walden came to WSU in 1977 as an assistant to former head coach Warren Powers. Powers left the school after coaching WSU to a 6-5 record (since revised to 7-4 because of a forfeit) to take over the head coaching job at Missouri.
Walden was then named head coach and posted records of 3-7-1 in 1978, 4-7 in 1979 and 4-7 in 1980.
Walden, 43, lives in Pullman with his wife, Janice, and three children: Lisa, Emily and Murray.
He was an all-WAC quarterback at the University of Wyoming in his playing days and then spent two years with the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League before going into coaching.
This season’s team started roughly, beating Division 1-AA opponent Montana State 33-21 and then squeaking past Colorado 14-10 after coming back from a 10-0 deficit in the last three minutes.
WSU then posted one of its biggest wins of the season by beating Arizona State 24-21 in its Pac-10 opener, then followed that with a 31-0 win over Pacific.
A week later, the Cougars blanked Oregon State 23-0 at Corvallis.
WSU failed to win for the first time the following week when it tied UCLA 17-17 at Pullman but came back a week later to beat Arizona at Tempe 34-19.
The first loss of the year came at Los Angeles the next week when the Cougars fell 41-17 to USC but then they rebounded to beat Oregon 39-7 and Cal 19-0 before losing to Washington.
He first coached at Amory High School in Mississippi, and then was an assistant coach at Nebraska and Miami before joining Powers at WSU in 1976.
This story was published in the Dec. 3, 1981, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.