Willingham: A vision of things past at UW

As an echo waker-upper, Tyrone Willingham’s resume is undeniably skimpy. Then again, perhaps it takes more than the 15 minutes he was allotted for the job at Notre Dame.

Presumably, he will get a longer shot at the University of Washington – and, yes, that should be interpreted in terms of both duration and odds.

But it is curious that the one thing Willingham has been hired to do as the Huskies’ new football coach was the one thing he simply failed at in the job from which he was bounced, fairly or not, two weeks ago:

Exhume decaying glories.

So prominent was this on the to-do list when UW introduced Willingham on Monday that the ceremony should have aired on Husky Classic.

New UW president Mark Emmert had barely finished saying he and athletic director Todd Turner had been looking for “someone who would rebuild the tradition of Husky football” when he rear-ended it with the assurance that “it couldn’t have been clearer in my mind that this was the man that we wanted to lead the University of Washington back to its former glory days.”

This was followed by Willingham himself noting that, “What I would hope to do in my time here is to go back to all those great things and great accomplishments that this program has achieved.”

Which raises the question: Can you win the 1960 Rose Bowl or the 1991 National Championship twice?

This would seem to be a program with nowhere to go but back.

Is this the state of Husky football as we know it now – so sad and sorry that future vistas of success cannot even be imagined without the notion of having to retrace some very old tracks to get there? Apparently so.

Is Tyrone Willingham the coach to lead this roundabout expedition?

Well, in the words of our buddy the Magic 8 Ball, “Reply hazy, try again.”

For all the well-earned hosannas Emmert and Turner showered on their new hire Monday, Willingham was at Montlake in no small part because – in a bit of reverse musical chairs – he was the only player still available when all the seats had been filled. That is, he was the only player with a name and reputation who could be sold to UW’s well-heeled constituents at the going rate of $1.43 million – that’s the guaranteed money – without having them recoil and blurt out, “For this guy?”

The other collegiate flavors of the month – Jeff Tedford, Urban Meyer, Bobby Petrino – had either baffled the Husky highbrows by staying at their current schools (silly fellows) or finding greener gridirons elsewhere. That was the A list – at least until Notre Dame did the unthinkable and fired Willingham.

“When Tyrone became available a few weeks ago,” Emmert said, “we were absolutely stunned and elated.”

Take note, those of you new to the poker table: Notre Dame’s discard beats a draw to anybody on the B list.

This is not a universal sentiment out there in Dawg World, where in some precincts Willingham’s one measly Rose Bowl during his seven years as Stanford’s head coach gets shrugged off because the Cardinal managed to lose to San Jose State that same year, to say nothing of Texas (by 50-odd points) and Washington itself. Still, one trip to Pasadena is more than the other geniuses and NFL apprentices accomplished there, at least dating back to John Ralston.

As for his Notre Dame stay, the 8-0 start in 2002 managed to get drowned out by his 13-15 record since, and if the institutional panic by the Irish’s new administration was spectacularly craven, well, it’s a craven business, as the Huskies themselves demonstrated in dealing with Keith Gilbertson.

Much has been made of Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White’s Teflon pronouncement that “from Sunday through Friday, the football team has exceeded expectations in every way,” and we assume if the next Irish coach takes a Wednesday off and the star linebacker shows up in night court that evening the same hook that Willingham got will be applied again.

But it also underscored one brutal truth: Willingham’s teams, and sometimes his tactics, have been only moderately productive on Saturdays.

Will that be good enough for Old Glory U?

It certainly hasn’t been to this point.

But then, the Huskies haven’t been at this point for several decades now – not just 1-10 losers, but scandalized on top of that, a program of problems and punchlines. And while Turner has touted the launching of a new campaign to “reinvest in football” – translation: dig deep, you Tyees – and needs the football team to win some games to prime the pump, the Huskies at the moment need success in the Sunday-Friday department as much or more than on Saturdays.

So loudly did Emmert drone on about “integrity, discipline, excellence, someone who would always make us proud” that the unspoken implication nearly became spoken: the Huskies were out to hire the anti-Rick Neuheisel.

To the point that the question had to be asked of Willingham.

“That one I’m not sure of,” he answered. “I’m not sure of all the qualities that Rick displayed, so I don’t know what the contrast will truly be.

“I do know Tyrone Willingham. He is a person that believes in doing what’s right. He believes in family. He believes in hard work. He believes in being intelligent in that work, and as I mentioned for all the players, I think it’s important that coaches, even at my tender age, have fun also. So those are the things I know about Tyrone Willingham and hopefully some of the things that I’ll bring to this program. And how that contrasts with Rick, I’m not sure.”

One thing is certain: Rick was too involved with the first person to ever refer to himself in the third.

It was at this moment in the festivities that Emmert was moved to chime in that, “We weren’t interested in anyone else’s character except Tyrone Willingham’s, and we picked him because of those attributes. Not because he was or wasn’t anything compared to anyone else.”

While it’s never advisable to point out that a university president’s pants are on fire, please.

Of course, those are echoes that no one at Washington wants to wake up.