UW: The Nadir

I was snookered. Consider it the last time I overestimate an 0-10 team. After the Huskies stole defeat from the jaws of victory in a 16-13 double-overtime Crapple Cup loss to the Cougars, it can't get any worse for UW -- except that it can. The Huskies will be heavy underdogs against Cal Saturday in a quest to go 0-12. Wow. The only winless team in major-college football is also one that made a Rose Bowl this decade and won a national championship during the last one, all the while a Top-20 program. The fall from grace is complete. So how did Tyrone Willingham drive this train so far off the rails? It's instructive to look at Willingham's past to see how his present is so bad.

It's hard to remember that four years ago Willingham was a hot coaching prospect. He had success and moral outrage on his side after getting canned by Notre Dame. His ouster after a three-year record of 21-16 caused consternation among some Irish faithful who felt the school debased itself in the name of winning at any cost. Prior to that, Willingham was successful in Palo Alto, where he brought Stanford -- Stanford! -- to a Rose Bowl. (It's also hard to remember a time when USC didn't have a stranglehold on the Pac-10). But what those schools have in common are high academic standards. Willingham was a success working under those circumstances, but apparently doesn't have what it takes to operate outside them.

I imagine Willingham in living rooms coming across as a military recruiter, exuding confidence and integrity, while appealing as much to parents as he does to the athlete. When you're recruiting people considering Stanford or Notre Dame, you're dealing with kids who are real student-athletes, insofar as they exist in major-college football. Presumably they're successful at juggling the rigors of football with long hours of classwork. By and large, they're self-motivated. But at a place like UW -- or most schools, for that matter -- where more external motivation is needed, Coach Ty fell flat.

Willingham clearly failed as a motivator. He has the charisma of dry toast, and his press conferences and interviews are notoriously bland, even by the diluted standards of coachspeak. You don't have to be a quote machine to be successful, but it helps to change your expression once in a while. Pete Carroll, Nick Saban and Mike Leach are different in that they're affable, slick and quirky, respectively, but they all have personality. In addition to being good recruiters, they seem to get through to their players most of the time. But Willingham never got through to his UW teams. (Also, Willingham didn't recruit well early on, but his recent classes have been better. I bet a better motivator has more success with Ty's players next year.) His stoic demeanor looked more distant and icy as the losses mounted. At schools like Stanford and Notre Dame, Willingham could get away with the edict-from-on-high thing, but that didn't cut it at UW. Willingham didn't motivate his players, and if you're not a motivator, you're not really a coach.

Despite all this, I still think Willingham can be successful elsewhere. UW fans probably don't care where Willingham goes, just that he is going. But install Ty at a service academy or a brainy school and he can win again, and some schools fitting this description might soon have openings. It's not hard to picture Willingham at Vanderbilt, where Bobby Johnson has the Commodores poised to go to a bowl for the first time since 1982. Certainly bigger programs will come calling, and Johnson's name has been linked to the Clemson vacancy. Northwestern has won 9 games under hot young coach Pat Fitzgerald, but it's not clear if he wants to leave Evanston; Fitzgerald was a linebacker on the Wildcats team that made the 1996 Rose Bowl. Rice is also uncharacteristically bowl-eligible, and the Owls' fan base might approve of an established name like Willingham if that job were to open up. (Lt. Daniels could weigh in on this). But it's also quite possible that Willingham's reputation is so bruised by his UW failure that he has to take an assistant job somewhere.

Fans might disagree, but I think the UW program is in better shape than when Willingham came on four years ago. That's not saying much because he took over a house in shambles, following a 1-10 season in 2004. The team had little talent and was still dealing with the aftermath of Rick Neuheisel's malfeasance. These days, the program is cleaner, and if you surround Jake Locker with a modicum of talent next year, UW will win at least a few games. Nonetheless, much of UW's failure clearly lies at the feet of its coach. He didn't recruit well enough early on, and his style was a bad fit at a place like Washington. It's almost too bad because it confirms the old adage: nice guys finish last.

UW head coach rumor mill

The news came out yesterday that the University of Washington interviewed Notre Dame offensive coordinator Michael Haywood to replace Ty Willingham. I can't imagine that Haywood is a serious candidate, because 1) Notre Dame's offense stinks and 2) he is not even calling the plays for the shitty Notre Dame offense.

More significantly, I think he's not a big enough name that will appease the fans. The school wants someone who creates buzz and I just don't think the mastermind of the shitty Notre Dame offense is that guy.

The Dice Game and Lady Dice were at dinner with some friends talking about this news when Dice Friend, an individual who happens to be in the know about these things, shocked us. I asked, "Dice Friend, who do you think is going to be the next UW coach?"

"Jim Mora, Jr."

Isn't this the same individual who is under contract to coach the Seahawks next year? The chosen one? Dice Friend said it doesn't matter and that the Seahawks will not hold him to the contract because of the PR disaster it would cause locally if the team prevented him from taking the UW job. Even more surprising was the next name thrown out by Dice Friend.

"Mark Richt."

The Georgia coach? Why would he leave a top flight SEC school with fertile recruiting to come coach at UW? Dice Friend says money. Georgia is apparently not compensating Richt that well and UW is willing to pay to make a big splash. Richt can recruit, but can he coach? Is there a more disappointing team this season in college football than the Georgia Bulldogs? That whole idea seems crazy to me.

One coach that had been mentioned -- Gary Pinkel from Missouri -- seems like he's now off the market for the UW job.

I just share the knowledge. Y'all can discuss.

Bye Ty

The inevitable happened today, as many thought it would. UW euthanized Tyrone Willingham, even though the athletic director had previously said he didn't "foresee" making a change during the season. But this was a mercy killing in every sense of the word. The toxic environment at UW made Wall Street look like Disneyland. 

It was almost too fitting that UW fell to 0-7 on Saturday against the last school to fire Willingham. That meant the Huskies officially could not make a bowl, widely regarded as the only way Willingham could have saved his job. They hit new lows in the 33-7 loss. The Huskies gained only 124 yards while fans derisively cheered each of their 9 first downs. Insult upon injury, Notre Dame executed a fake punt while up 24-0 in the third quarter. 

There had been speculation that Willingham might step down, but he said he had never considered that. On the possibility of resigning, Willingham said, "It's just not in my makeup." So we know he is a standup guy who runs a clean program, but as Stanklin wrote awhile back, people only pretend to care about cleanliness in college football. Winning is it.

Ted Miller writes that Willingham's hiring split the fan base. Add to that some weak early recruiting classes, and Willingham was behind from the beginning. His last two recruiting classes, however, are well-regarded, and the next coach will have some young talent to work with. But he will also have to re-recruit some players who have rescinded their verbal commitments as all of this uncertainty has played out.

The UW administration has been preparing for this day for at least a year. When former athletic director Todd Turner (who hired Willingham) was eased out last December, Ty's days were numbered. Washington clumsily took 9 months to fill the job, as they were no doubt rebuffed by candidates who didn't want their first act to be the firing of Willingham. But the interim AD Scott Woodward was promoted to the job full-time. He is a guy president Mark Emmert brought along with him from LSU, and Emmert surely backed him up on this. An 11-32 record didn't help Ty's cause.

When former Raiders coach Lane Kiffin says to ESPN, "The University of Washington is a great job," that's about as public a lobbying effort as you can get. It's hard to know what kind of head coach he really was in the miasma that is the Raiders, but he rose quickly at USC and the 33-year-old could be the shot in the arm this program needs. Missouri coach Gary Pinkel's name has also been linked to UW, as has Seahawks head-coach-in-waiting Jim Mora, Jr. Would he jilt the Hawks and jump to UW? Remember that he helped seal his fate with the Falcons when he said how much he'd like to coach at his alma mater.  

Granted, Willingham's tenure at UW ended up a failure. But it's worth pointing out that fans are no more mature about these kinds of things than players. Whenever a coach or manager identified as a "players' coach" is fired, inevitably players will say things like, "There was no discipline," and "We didn't have any direction." So a disciplinarian is hired and the team/program succeeds for awhile until the players start tuning him out and then he's canned as well. Then the athletes say things like, "He never treated us like a man." A players' coach is hired again and the cycle continues. 

Fans are no better. Following Rick Neuheisel's shenanigans, UW's program needed a cleansing and fans were embarrassed. They got a Mr. Clean in Willingham, although they were quick to trash him. Of course, this line of reasoning only goes so far because Ty never won at UW. But it provides a cautionary tale for Washington as it considers who it will hire next. 

Dog Bites Man: P-I Edition

From Tuesday's P-I on the supposed duel between Charlie Weis and Ty Willingham:

...[T]he current leader of the Irish doesn't spend time exchanging small talk or inside secrets with the man he replaced at Notre Dame in 2005.

Weis, whose team invades Husky Stadium on Saturday for a 5 p.m. battle, said Tuesday he is cordial with Willingham and talked to him in January at the national coaches convention, but the two are not exactly on speed dial or each other's Fave Five phone lists.

Let's see. The guy who's gone 26–17 chooses not to seek coaching advice from the guy who's gone 11–31. Stop the presses, Joe, I've got a hot one!

An SGB Challenge

Defend - or, hell, just explain! - Tyrone Willingham's decision to burn two redshirt by playing Terrance Dailey and Cody Bruns. I believe Dailey played all of 3 downs.

Nightmare on Montlake Part IV

It may seem like we're running out of options to explain the myriad ways the Huskies are losing. But Saturday's 35-28 loss to Stanford is easy to get a handle on: no Jake Locker = no chance. When the sophomore stud QB broke his right thumb in the second quarter while blocking, any chance of UW winning quickly dissipated. Yet they made a game of it, and redshirt freshman QB Ronny Fouch wasn't bad.

Regardless, Washington is 0-4, Locker could be out six weeks and the coaching staff is running out of answers. The calls for coach Willingham's head grow louder, and the opinions on the Seattle Times' Husky blog predictably espouse firing Ty (and hiring Lane Kiffin) or recommend that he do the "honorable thing" and step down. 

If fans want to spew venom at the coaching staff, some of it should go in defensive coordinator Ed Donatell's direction. UW gave up 466 yards to Stanford, a season-high for the Cardinal, and amazingly, the Huskies still don't have a single sack this season. But Donatell is no joke. He was a longtime NFL defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach, including a stint with the Broncos when they won two straight Super Bowls. Maybe he's turned into a terrible coach, or maybe he's dealing with an inexperienced unit that still should have a bright future.

Willingham deserves a mulligan this season. With a brutal non-conference schedule and now dealing with the loss of their leader, the Huskies are living in a bad dream. But kicking out a good recruiter and solid citizen like Willingham under these conditions is not only unfair to him, it could potentially scare away established successors. Think about what it would look like to the rest of the country if UW fired its coach four games into a season that featured three games against top-25 clubs, a terrible excessive celebration penalty and a major injury to its starting QB. UW isn't a top program any more, and the administration can't think they would get top-shelf candidates if the head job were vacant. But the decline started before Willingham got here. Let him see this through and no doubt next year will look a lot better. Besides, UW isn't even the worst team in the state; it's only 54 days till the Apple Cup. 

UW's Good, Bad and Ugly, or, How Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

Wow, that sucked. Washington's first game of the rest of Ty Willingham's coaching life and they produce this? We know that Oregon is a top-25 team and this was the only conference matchup of any BCS schools on a day when most teams gorged on cupcakes. And it helped make for a really ugly day of football in Seattle, as WSU got thumped 39-13 by Oklahoma State at Qwest Field. But 44-10? Really? UW face-planted with a much louder thud than anyone expected, and it could set the tone for things to get really ugly around Montlake. But a measure of patience is urged. 

For all the talk of how this team would be different, the Huskies did just about everything the same from their hapless 4-9 campaign of last year. The offensive line didn't or couldn't block, and UW averaged a paltry 2.2 yards on 43 rushes. To call the O-line sieve-like is to disrespect sieves everywhere. The lack of protection forced Jack Locker to run for his life like Fran Tarkenton in an old NFL Films reel. For Locker to become Tim Tebow West, he needs to stay upright. But if the protection against Oregon is any indication, he will spend way too much time in the scrum this year. Also, Locker's accuracy continues to be an issue; he completed only 12 of 28 passes. However, he's not the problem here, but he will figure prominently in the solution, if there is one.  

The defense came out in a snazzy new 3-3-5 alignment, but often opted not to tackle. One of the results (or three): it gave up three touchdowns of 25 yards or more. And this wasn't against the juggernaut offense of Dennis Dixon and Johnathan Stewart. Injuries forced the Ducks to resort to their third- and fourth-string quarterbacks in the second half. You might recall that was the half in which Oregon pulled away, outscoring UW 30-0. If ever there was a time to catch Oregon in a bit of lull, this was it. Consider the opportunity squandered. 

But acknowledge one glaring fact: UW is a young team. 24 true or redshirt freshmen traveled to Eugene. They represent a potentially bright future, coming from two heralded recruiting classes. But they have to grow up fast. BYU and Oklahoma come calling the next two games and these Husky pups are playing for their coach's neck. The specter of 0-3 is staring them in the face and the calls for Willingham's dismissal will grow louder.

It's kind of funny to think that if Coach Ty had just scheduled, let's say, Idaho and Louisiana Tech as non-conference foes the next two weeks, he'd be fine. Dust yourself off after the Oregon debacle, crush a couple of tomato cans, and you're 2-1 going into the meat of conference play. Supporters just want wins, and it doesn't matter who they're against. At the end of the season, fans will call "early-season victories against inferior opponents" by a shorter name: wins. At any rate, give Willingham integrity points for scheduling tough non-Pac-10 teams. Unfortunately, UW fans probably won't hear that argument over the din of calls for his head. Washington should feel lucky to have Willingham as its coach, and doubly fortunate that Rick Neuheisel's baggage and chest-thumping are someone else's problems. But if things don't change soon, boosters will run him out of town. Then -- a la Charlie Weis' 19-6 record in his first two years at Notre Dame after Willingham's ouster there -- another coach will swoop in and get the credit for leading Ty's talented recruits to brighter times. And then fans will know that they were right, right? 

The Anticipation?

Where is one to find comfort in Seattle's bleak major-sports landscape these days? The Sonics are gone, the Mariners were out of contention before the days started getting shorter, and the Storm...well, maybe someone could page them to see how they're doing. Weather notwithstanding, many around here are looking forward to autumn, and maybe not just because the Seahawks are poised to rubber-stamp their next NFC West crown. Could this be the year the Seahawks' college brethren on Montlake turn it around? Their coach better hope so.

The Huskies have started the last two years tantalizingly well. In 2006, they shocked all by jumping out to a 4-1 record, including an upset of then-undefeated UCLA and a nailbiting loss to USC. But QB injuries collapsed the house of cards, and they ended up 5-7. Last year to start, UW thumped Syracuse on the road, then beat ranked Boise State. No small feat, considering the Broncos were fresh off a historic bowl win, stunning Oklahoma (including Clay Bennett, I hope -- although I may not have known I hoped it at the time) and a certain cheerleader. But the following week, the Huskies couldn't hold an early lead and lost to Ohio State. From there, a once-promising season devolved into a 4-9 campaign, lowlighted by come-from-ahead losses to lowly Arizona and Apple Cup foe Washington State. After letting coach Tyrone Willingham twist in the wind for awhile, UW decided not to fire him.

To be fair, the Huskies played what many deemed the toughest shedule in the country; in addition to the aforementioned out-of-conference teams, Washington also traveled to face Sugar Bowl participant Hawaii. The feeling was that the Huskies made strides despite their crappy record. This year, though -- in jockspeak -- UW has got to step it up and get some W's.

Unfortunately for win-hungry fans, Willingham doesn't schedule Directional Tech or Don Bosco Prep: The College Years. Once again, Washington's out-of-conference schedule looks rough: BYU, Oklahoma and Notre Dame. Yet UW needs to go at least 2-1 in its rugged opening trilogy against Oregon, BYU and Oklahoma (The Sonics Bowl?).

Washington has some horses. Talented redshirt sophomore QB Jake Locker is a duel threat, but he needs to rein in his throws. Some publications have rated recent UW recruiting classes in the top 25. And few Pac-10 teams north of Los Angeles seem to be ascendant at this time.

Willingham has always appeared to be a man of integrity, sometimes to his detriment. He turned an unenviable task at Stanford into a Rose Bowl berth for the Cardinal. He did a better job than you remember at Notre Dame, and his unfortunate ouster after three seasons and a 21-16 record sent Jesuit collars flying. Even waist-challenged savior Charlie Weis' record is only one game better in South Bend than Willingham, and his early success came on the backs of his predecessor's recruits. You think the UW-Notre Dame tilt might get some hype?

However, Willingham's unwillingness to get dirty could be his downfall. He seems reluctant to pluck potential talent from junior colleges and his lack of patience for malfeasance appears genuine. Rick Neuheisel he is not.

But in Year 4 -- nice guy or not -- Willingham must win. And the Huskies should win more then they have. UW looks like a middle-of-the-pac Pac-10 team with a shot at a bowl. But that's thanks to a myriad of craptastic postseason games that make teams feel marginally better about mediocre seasons. If Ty doesn't win, he better watch his back. The AD who pushed for Willingham's retention last year, Todd Turner, is gone. Administration and boosters will likely strike a hands-on-their-hips, toe-tapping pose if early losses mount. Basically, UW needs to make a bowl this year, or else. Or else we'll see Tyrone Willingham go the way of the Sonics -- not necessarily stolen from us by Bob Stoops, but sent off to some other place that will probably appreciate him more, at least for a few years.