Saturday, December 14, 2013

The Future of Husky Football

It's been a while since head football coach Steve Sarkisian announced he was leaving the University of Washington for USC.  In the meantime, former Husky quarterback and current QB coach, Marques Tuiasosopo has been named interim head coach and will coach the Dawgs in the Fight Hunger Bowl.  Which I don't understand because UW announced not long after naming Tuiasosopo interim head coach that Boise State University head coach Chris Petersen will be the new head coach of the Huskies.

Things seem to be in carefully hidden turmoil on the Husky sidelines.  Sarkisian is poaching a great deal of the assistant coaching staff to take to USC with him.  I haven't seen any instance where Petersen is bring coaches from BSU.  And the future of Tuiasosopo is up in the air after the bowl game.

I am, to be honest, not completely happy with the choice of Petersen to coach the Huskies.  Petersen's record as head coach is 92–12.  But at least two of those 12 losses came at the hands of the Huskies.  The BSU Broncos are in the Mountain West conference.  That conference has never been strong nor very respected as far as I can tell.  Looking at it this year, there is one ranked team in the Mountain West (Fresno State at #20) and only five teams have winning records and only six are bowl eligible (out of 12 teams).  Compare with the Pac-12 where Petersen will now be playing.  Nine teams are going to bowls and five are ranked, including Stanford ant #5.

And I don't think BSU has ever played Oregon or Stanford, something UW does every year.  My worry is Petersen may have been great in the Mountain West but will be over his head in the Pac-12.  Playing out of his league, or conference.

They say Petersen is a great recruiter, which is good because apparently Sarkisian is also dragging recruits to USC from UW.  Petersen is said to be able to find the diamond in the rough where others just see rough.  And I would think recruiting to UW would be easier then BSU ("Hey, you want to go to Seattle and UW that gets national exposure, or Boise and BSU and labor in obscurity?").  But I am cautiously hopeful that Petersen will prove me wrong and be a great head coach.  Of course, I was hopeful that Tyrone Willingham would be a great coach, and he nearly destroyed the team.

And since Tuiasosopo is coaching the Dawgs through their bowl game, we won't see Petersen's work until next fall.  That's a long wait.

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