I normally don’t like to go on long tangents on my alma mater, Western Carolina University, but it just feels right this time.

Finally, the football program is starting to look like an actual team. Finally, big changes are coming around the bend in Cullowhee.

It’s about time, too.

During the four years that I was in school there, from 2004-2008, the football program flat out stunk. The Catamounts are currently on a two year Southern Conference losing streak and have won just three games in the last two seasons and have gotten spanked by SEC powerhouses Florida, Alabama and Georgia during that time as well.

This team has been bad for a while, but things are different now. Way different.

At least, they look different. We won’t really know until Aug. 28 rolls around the Catamounts open up at home against Shorter College.

When new coach Dennis Wagner was hired from the realms of working under Bill Calahan at Nebraska in January, he has completely changed the outlook of the football program. He has brought this refreshing feeling back in the Cullowhee valley, which is something that hasn’t been felt for a very long time.

Under the old coach, it was the sort of thing where the inmates ran the asylum. It seemed that the players didn’t care and didn’t want to play football at Western Carolina and neither did the coaches.

Guys would get arrested, yet, some of them still got to play. Players would make bad grades, yet somehow they were still on the field every Saturday. Kids transferred or just mysteriously vanished from the program. Things were bad. Very, very bad.

Was the team talented? Extremely. They just didn’t have the right discipline nor the right leadership to help guide them to the wins.

You can’t win without good discipline.

And that’s what Wagner and his staff are bringing to the table this season.

Discipline.

Wagner has kicked off the kids who weren’t committed to the program. He has kicked off the guys who weren’t doing so hot in the classroom. He has gotten rid of the guys who didn’t follow the law. He has kicked off the guys who didn’t want to play football in the Cullowhee valley.

It’s Wags’ way or the highway, and some kids have been learning that the hard way.

That was step one.

He recruited what seems to be a talented bunch of kids from all over in just five months on the job. Practices seem different, too. Kids are running during every play, they are hustling and if they mess up, Wagner pulls them out and punishes them by doing up-downs, push-ups, sit-ups or anything that he can think of.

During practice it is all business. The team looks serious and looks extremely focused. There is no fooling around under Wagner’s watch. Laughing, joking, fooling around will not be tolerated. I don’t see why a team that hasn’t won a conference game since 2005 would want to fool around or joke around in the first place.

Before I graduated in 2008, I had the opportunity to cover the Catamounts annual spring game. I remember seeing a quarterback rush into the endzone for a touchdown. After getting up, he grabbed the ball and spiked it to the ground.

Wagner immediately grabbed that QB in the middle of the spring game and made him do up-downs on the sideline while another QB went in and took some reps.

Dude, you went 1-10 last year and 2-9 the year before. You’ve lost every SoCon game in the last two years and the overall morale of the team hasn’t been good for four years. What’s there to spike a ball for? We saw that you scored. We saw that you out-ran the defense, we get it.
I’m thinking that Wagner was feeling the exact same way when that young man spiked the ball in the endzone. Hence why he was punished in front of the entire crowd for it.

That’s not going to fly here, son.

There is more of a team unity, as well. The players are giving back to the community by picking up trash on the side of the road, going to local attractions and telling people about upcoming events, everything is done as a team.

Together.

This was not done too much, if ever, under the old administration and it is refreshing to see these kids reaching out into the community.

That’s step two.

Step three.

He (I’m sure he played a role in this if he wasn’t the main one) has changed the ticket procedure, completely eliminating general admission and making everything reserved seating. He also decided to move the team back to their old sideline on the home side of EJ Whitmire Stadium, which forces the visiting team and the visiting crowd to have to deal with the loud and insane antics of the Pride of the Mountains Marching Band.

Pure genius.

Whoever decided to have the home team sideline on the non-student section is just dumb.
I know this might seem as a minor change from Wagner, but even these minor changes can make such a huge impact. It shows just how serious he is about this football team and how badly he wants to change things.

Now, the student body and the fans can rally behind the team and hopefully, the team can feed of the crowd’s enthusiasm.

Changing small things like this will make a world of difference and to me, it shows that he really does care about EVERYTHING affiliated with the team.

Step four.

The unveiling of the new Catamount section in the Sylva Wal-Mart.

If you’ve never been to Cullowhee, there’s not much there, which is what makes the campus so unique. Other than the beautiful mountains surrounding the gorgeous university, folks there spend a lot of time shopping in Sylva and Waynesville.

I remember when I went to Wal-Mart in Sylva and you could buy a Tar Heel hat and a Wolfpack jersey, but there was nothing, NOTHING, supporting the school down the road. I found it odd and shocking that the Wal-Mart had nothing supporting Catamount athletics.

If you wanted anything pertaining to WCU, you had to go online to order it, or you would have to go onto the campus in the gift store and buy it.

Not anymore, though.

Now, they have an entire section where you can buy Catamount shirts, pants, hats, pencils, stuffed animals, coffee mugs, whatever you can really think of. It’s an entire section dedicated to the rebuilding and resurging Catamount football program.

I don’t know this, for sure, but I have a feeling that new coach Dennis Wagner was behind this.

Step five is perhaps my most favorite of them all and is the coolest.

The unveiling of the new Catamount logo and football helmet was held this past Wednesday and I really like the new logo and the fact that the school has gone back to the old ‘true-gold’ instead of the yellow that they’ve been using the last few years.

The new logo is impressive and it actually makes the team look serious. The old logo was a cat flying through the air over the mountains. It looked like it wanted a hug. The new helmet looks awesome, too. All of these changes have me excited for Catamount football in the fall.

See for yourself.

Will Dennis Wagner change things around this year and turn the Catamounts into a perennial SoCon powerhouse? No. I really don’t expect him to, either.

But given the right amount of time for the team to grow and develop under Wagner, big things could very well be in store in the Cullowhee valley very, very soon.

Wagner has made significant changes to the program that has shown how serious he is about winning and turning things around and it is a refreshing feeling to see this as a WCU fan.

Finally, the football team is starting to look like a real actual team and it’s about time, too.

And they have ‘Wags’ to thank for it.