Will Sun Shine For Lambright, Huskies In Hawaii? An Aloha Bowl Win Would Quiet Coach’s Critics, For Now

It looks like a meaningless little bowl game played solely for entertainment purposes on the biggest holiday afternoon of the year.

But today’s Aloha Bowl serves, in many eyes, as a referendum on Washington coach Jim Lambright, who leads his team into battle today against the Michigan State Spartans.

Lambright is concluding his fifth season as the Huskies’ coach, a tenure that has elicited increasing grumbling among some UW faithful, who feel Lambright can’t win the big one, isn’t the man to lead the Huskies back to national prominence, and doesn’t have the grace and class of his predecessor, Don James.

All of those, of course, are debatable, and Lambright certainly has his share of defenders at the UW, particularly those who remember all the years he spent as an assistant, first joining the staff in 1969 before taking over as head coach when James resigned prior to the 1993 season.

And many deem it unseemly to even question Lambright yet, given the fact that he led the team through two years of probation and has the program in better shape immediately after those sanctions than many other programs that have run into NCAA trouble such as Oklahoma and Miami.

But the simplest defense for Lambright today would be a victory.

A win would momentarily quiet those who cite his 0-2 bowl record as proof that he can’t win the big game, would show that he can lead his team to victory against a top-notch intersectional opponent, would prove that this year’s season-ending three-game stumble was mostly the result of injuries, and would quell any immediate speculation about his future.

Much of that wild - and apparently unfounded - speculation has been born out of Lambright’s unsettled contract situation. Throughout his tenure at Washington, he has worked on a four-year contract that rolls over at the end of each season, meaning he always has four more years.

However, Lambright and the school couldn’t agree to the terms of a contract before this season. Both sides have downplayed the issue, saying it isn’t a big deal and was apparently the result of Lambright wanting some more money for himself and his assistants.

UW athletic director Barbara Hedges had said earlier this month that the contract would be signed before the Aloha Bowl game. That hasn’t happened, but she said this week that it remains a non-issue.

“It’s all moving along as anticipated,” Hedges said. “We are just working out the details.”

There has been some talk-radio-type speculation that the unsettled contract leaves an opening for big-monied boosters who might wish to lead an effort to replace Lambright.

But Hedges said there shouldn’t be anything read into the fact that the contract situation is still unsettled.

“Absolutely not, and there never has been (anything to read into it),” she said.

Lambright continues to say that the contract situation isn’t a big deal and that he isn’t worried about his critics. And he says he doesn’t view today’s game as any bigger than any other game his team has played during his tenure.

“None of that outside stuff has anything to do with why you get motivated or get mad at anybody or anything like that,” Lambright said.

And Lambright’s supporters have ample ammo for all of his critics.

To the charge that he isn’t the one to lead the team back to the heights it reached in the early ‘90s, his supporters can point to a 37-19-1 overall record that is the best of any Pac-10 team in his five years as coach, and a 27-12-1 conference record that is also the best.

Those records seem remarkable to many football observers given the fact that the Huskies had little incentive to win during Lambright’s first two years - when they couldn’t go to a bowl due to probation - and were stripped of 10 scholarships each in 1994 and 1995, diluting the depth of the team, something that became a huge weakness this season.

To the charge that Lambright can’t win a big game, his supporters can point to the memorable victory at Miami in 1994 or all of those Pac-10 wins, particularly the past three years when UW has gone 18-5-1 in conference play.

In fact, from early in the 1996 season to midway in the ‘97 season, the Huskies won 12 straight Pac-10 games, by an average of 22 points.