College Football – Washington’s Athletic Director Finally Makes the Right Move – Coach Fires
Scott Woodward, the newly appointed permanent athletic director at the University of Washington, made it official that Tyrone Willingham will not return for another season as the Huskies’ head football coach.
Willingham will stay on to coach the team’s remaining 5 games and then walk away with a $1 million buyout. Willingham was in his fourth year of a five-year contract.
His Huskies are currently 0-7 this season following a 33-7 slap by Notre Dame last Saturday (10-25-08) in the Huskies’ home turf. Their seventh straight loss of the season meant the Huskies would end the year with a losing record and elimination from bowl eligibility.
Only a fool stuck in an outhouse for the last 5 years wouldn’t know Willingham was leaving. Hopefully, whether or not the entire Willingham staff walks out the front door with him.
Washington’s football program needs some new faces, new game plans, new offensive and defensive schemes, new personalities, new life and new excitement before all of its fans leave Husky Stadium and never return.
Only an inexperienced chief administrator or a bankrupt fool would think that fans and sponsors would open their pockets to fund a new or remodeled stadium for a losing team. People with money don’t invest their hard-earned dollars in continually losing organizations that look like losers, talk like losers, and walk like losers.
People with money are more likely to give their money to an organization or charity that is fancy and already has something going. The reason is simple: winners want to run with winners or organizations that they perceive, with some cash input, will soon become winners.
Sanity prevents me from discussing Washington’s performance against Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish. Oh, okay, if you must know here are Husky’s offensive stats for the game: 26 rushing yards, 98 passing yards, 124 total offense yards. That is all you need to know.
If we were in biblical times, the players and coaches would probably be dodging rocks before leaving the stadium. If you think I’m exaggerating, he hasn’t seen the Huskies play since franchise quarterback Jake Locker was injured earlier this year.
By all accounts, Ty Willingham is a stand-up guy. He works hard, he’s honest, he’s down to earth, he has integrity, he doesn’t look for shortcuts or handouts. He wants to advance in this world by the sweat of his own brow, lifting himself up on his own to be successful in today’s competitive world of national level coaching.
As a great coach in Washington, he simply couldn’t win more games than he lost, and a host of paying clients (fans and sponsors) thought he couldn’t coach wins in Washington if his life depended on it. His record in Washington was 11 and 32 (11 wins and 32 losses) after seasons of 2-9, 5-7, 4-9 and 0-7 so far this year.
Its backers say no one could have quickly changed the program in Washington. There is too much evidence to the contrary, and it explains why his supporters are so few and jump ship like passengers on the Titanic.
Mark Dantonio took over a program at Michigan State that went 4-8 and was 7-6 his freshman year and in a bowl game, he is currently 7-2 this year and is ranked 22nd in the AP Poll Top 25. Current Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster went 1-11 in his first season last year and is 7-1 this season and is currently ranked No. 20 in the Top 25 poll .
When Mike Price went to UTEP, he took over a team that had won just 2 games in each of its last two seasons. In his first year, Price went 8-4 to a bowl, in his second year he went 8-4 to a bowl game. Don’t waste your breath telling me the head coach doesn’t make a difference. The head coach can make all the difference in the world.
Speculation is rampant on the Washington campus in Seattle and really throughout Western Washington about who will replace Ty Willingham. Washington’s powerhouses are likely to set their sights on a high-profile coach, which means, among other things, that a successor may not be announced until the current bowl season is over.
Until then, they’d be interviewing more losers than winners, as if we don’t know what it’s all about.
Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley