Dec. 27—Shortly before he tossed potatoes into the eager crowd of his Cougar football teammates with a wide smile on his face, Washington State senior wide receiver Joshua Meredith fought back tears.
The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl MVP reflected not only on WSU’s 34-21 victory over Utah State on Monday in Boise, which included his team-leading eight catches for 84 yards, but also on his five-year college career, which was shaped by perhaps the most tumultuous period in Cougar football history.
“This means everything,” said Meredith, wearing an MVP medallion nearly as large as his chest as he spoke to ESPN’s Tori Petry during the Potato Bowl trophy presentation. “It’s been five years, it’s been a long road. Every year has been something else. This year, we actually finished.”
Meredith lost his first head coach just seven games into his freshman season when the university fired Nick Rolovich for failing to comply with the state’s vaccine mandate.
Defensive coordinator Jake Dickert was named interim coach and WSU retained him as the full-time headman.
Meredith’s redshirt freshman season saw WSU enter the waters of name, image and likeness player compensation and the transfer portal. By his junior year, 10 Pac-12 schools had left the league and two starting quarterbacks, Cam Ward and John Mateer, along with a slew of his other teammates, had left Pullman for greener pastures.
Then, his head coach left too.
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Following Dickert’s departure last December for Wake Forest, Meredith joined his teammates in finally entering the transfer portal.
He did not end up going anywhere, though.
Meredith, quarterback Zevi Eckhaus and a number of other teammates returned.
They welcomed 75 new players to Pullman for coach Jimmy Rogers’ inaugural FBS season.
Facing a second year without a full conference, before six football-sponsoring schools, including Boise State and Utah State, join the Pac-12 next season, WSU played 11 schools from 10 different conferences, going 6-6 overall. WSU nearly beat three ranked teams on the road, including a three-point loss to No. 6 Ole Miss.
When Rogers became the second Cougar coach in the span of 12 months to leave Pullman for a Power Four job, it may have been easy for this year’s team — or at least Rogers’ assistants, some of whom were also bound for Iowa State — to simply give up.
But they didn’t.
Meredith, especially, did not.
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One of Meredith’s most impressive Potato Bowl plays came in the second quarter, with WSU leading 7-0.
Eckhaus had overthrown Meredith in the end zone on a previous play, but called his number again with the senior leaping to corral a 20-yard pass.
Two plays later, tight end Hudson Cedarland, who last year was a linebacker, made a block and then leaked out to record his first-career touchdown on a 1-yard reception. WSU led 14-0 going into halftime.
The Cougar offense seemed unstoppable on Monday with the Cougs gaining 628 total yards. Zevi Eckhaus accounted for over 360 of them, including 334 through the air, and the Cougars rushed for 255 yards in front of a Potato Bowl crowd of 17,031 at Albertsons Stadium.
Meredith gave his teammates and Cougar football fans a shoutout during his on-air MVP interview.
“I love these boys, look at them and look at the fans, man. They don’t got to be here. They don’t have to. But they pulled up and that’s what it means,” Meredith said to cheers from the thousands of WSU fans still in the stadium. “This whole week we’ve been practicing. No bad blood, no bad business, we’re playing football. That’s how it’s supposed to feel. I feel like a kid up here right now and now look, man, I’m gonna start crying, man, and I can’t cry. I love you, Cougs. Go Cougs!”
Meredith is one of seven WSU seniors who spent their entire college football careers in the crimson and gray, joining fellow wide receivers Leon Neal Jr. and Leyton Smithson, offensive linemen Brock Dieu and Christian Hilborn, defensive end Raam Stevenson and running back Dylan Paine.
Each began their WSU careers during the pandemic and a perfect storm of college football madness ensued.
WSU interim head coach Jesse Bobbit understood this perfectly because, five years ago, he lived it, too, as a Cougar graduate assistant.
Meredith praised Bobbit during his ESPN interview for choosing to stand by the Cougs the last several weeks and lead WSU to its first bowl game victory since 2018.
After spending almost a quarter of his youth in one place, the thought of moving on was still setting in for Meredith well after the French fries were dumped on Bobbit’s head and the teary-eyed hugs were exchanged.
“I got a lot of people on the team that I consider brothers. Everyone’s a friend of mine. It was love across the board, and this next chapter of my life, I don’t know when I’m gonna see any of them,” Meredith said. “Pullman’s gonna look different, and not being in Pullman is gonna feel weird, because I see it as home. I mean, it’s on my license plate, like it’s everything for me.”
Meredith said that coaches had told him that college football was the most fun that he was ever going to have.
“For a long time, I didn’t believe in that, but I’ll tell you, this year is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” Meredith said. “I’m going to miss that. I’m going to miss waking up and seeing my brothers every day.”
Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com, or on X or Instagram @Sam_C_Taylor.