Cougar receiver Jack Fanning with Yell Squad members as coach Jim Sutherland faux orders him back over to the squad in this 1958 publicity photo. (Photo: WSU Libraries)
LONG BEFORE THE AIR RAID and the pass-happy era that produced the likes of Jack Thompson, Drew Bledsoe and Ryan Leaf, there was the Jim Sutherland Era at Washington State. He coached the Cougar football team from 1956-63 and deployed his pioneering ideas in the passing game to shatter overland records and produce some of the most fabled names in WSU history.
Three of his most prominent receivers hailed from Spokane and all would go on to earn enshrinement in the WSU Athletics Hall of Fame. One of them, Pacific Coast Conference honoree Jack Fanning, died last week in his hometown, The Spokesman-Review reports. He was 89.
From 1956-58, Fanning and his Rogers High classmate, Don Ellingsen, terrorized Pacific Coast secondaries under Sutherland's innovative use of precisely timed routes with sets of two, three and four receivers long before others in the college or pro game thought of the idea. As seniors in 1958, the Cougars went 7-3 and narrowly missed a Rose Bowl berth. They were invited to the Sugar Bowl but for a PCC team to play in a bowl other than the Rose required permission from fellow schools; Washington, USC and UCLA voted no.
Fanning and Ellingsen would set the receiving standard for two other Inland Northwest products -- Gail Cogdill of Spokane and Don Ellersick from Diamond Lake north of Spokane -- who were a year younger. Ellersick would go on to play for the Minnesota Vikings and Cogdill for the Detroit Lions, where he would earn NFL Rookie of the Year honors in 1960.
Fanning, Ellingsen and Cogdill are all in the WSU Athletics Hall of Fame.
Fanning and Ellingsen also starred on Washington State's track and field squad, with Fanning setting the school record in the pole vault.
"On the gridiron he led the nation with nine touchdown receptions in 1957, a mark that tied the school record and remains among WSU's single-season leaders," WSU noted when Fanning was inducted into the school's athletics hall of fame in 2012.
"Also that season, he caught a school-record three touchdown passes in a season-opening win at Nebraska, caught a school-record 87-yard touchdown pass against Stanford and finished the season second in the Pacific Coast Conference in receptions. He finished his three-year football career with 45 catches for 714 yards and 10 touchdowns."