Newsline: Bennett can't win at rumor game

JIM STERK QUIPPED in a phone message the other day that he was headed to the Final Four in San Antonio "to protect our interests." Translated, that means he's putting a shield around Tony Bennett that says "keep away." Word from Pullman is that Sterk and WSU president Elson Floyd are putting together a package of program enhancements, to be unveiled shortly, to keep their popular coach in place.

In the ideal world, that package would include enough faclities upgrades, air travel improvements and salary bumps for assistant coaches to fend off what is becoming the annual circus around Tony's future.

Columnist Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times, in an interesting piece in Sunday's editions, calls the annual Bennett sweepstakes "an unsolvable dilemma," curable only by the unthinkable: losing.

Sterk and Floyd will be aiming to crack the code in the coming days -- not permanently, of course, but perhaps long enough to keep Tony content for three or four seasons.

Here's the link to Brewer's column:

Tony Bennett's successes mean he'll always be wnted elsewhere