Only time will tell for Sarkisian

Funny, Steve Sarkisian doesn’t look black.

But apparently he is, if I’m correct in parsing Tyrone Willingham’s remarks as the University of Washington’s ex-at-last football coach turned the keys over to the coach-elect this week.

In an otherwise well-reasoned interview with the Chicago Tribune, Willingham reflected on the abominable lack of African-American head coaches in major college football but couldn’t resist giving the wheel an extra spin.

“It has always been the downtrodden that we’ve had to take over,” he said. “There are a lot of things not right with those situations. The degree of difficulty is enhanced in those programs. You do the best you can with the resources around you.”

Really? The downtrodden?

Let’s take a look at that.

There were six African-American head coaches in the FBS this season, an indefensible number regrettably halved in the last month. Of those six, Buffalo’s Turner Gill took over what may well have been the worst program in America and on Friday night steered it to its first bowl game. Coach-of-the-Year voting is hereby suspended.

But the rest? Kevin Sumlin became the head coach at Houston this season, with the Cougars coming off three straight bowl appearances. Randy Shannon took over at Miami in 2007 and if memory serves, the Hurricanes have a decent pedigree – nine straight bowl trips through 2006, a national championship in 2001. Sylvester Croom had a tough job at Mississippi State, no question, but the school had a run of bowl games from 1998-2000 – just three years before he was hired. When Ron Prince followed Bill Snyder at Kansas State, the Wildcats had slumped for two seasons – after playing in 12 straight bowls.

And Willingham? Yes, he inherited a 1-10 team at Washington – which hadn’t had a losing season in the previous 27 years. Before that, as the coach at Notre Dame … well, has anyone ever tried to sell the Irish as “downtrodden” in the realm of college football without immediately being prescribed Thorazine?

No one would have described the Huskies as downtrodden, either, until Willingham got through with them.

Black, white or purple, this is Steve Sarkisian’s burden now. He and the school confirmed as much Saturday, though the “I (Heart) Sark” buttons that UW president Mark Emmert and athletic director Scott Woodward sported over the weekend were a dead giveaway.

The USC offensive coordinator is young (34), energetic, a product of the Pac-10’s uberprogram, a groomer of quarterbacks and presumably persuasive in the living rooms of recruits. He is also reviled on the Trojans’ fan message boards, which gives him a good grounding in what he’ll experience as a head coach.

And how will he do at the Dub?

Who can possibly know?

For nearly all of his purported assets, there is a snarky disclaimer. Youthful? Don’t you mean “inexperienced?” Good recruiter? Who can’t recruit to USC? Great program? Yeah, but is it great because of him or despite him?

It’s Wheel of Fortune when it comes to hiring first-timers. Maybe the wheel stops on Bob Stoops, who had never been a head coach before Oklahoma took a flyer on him, and maybe it stops on Bill Doba. You hope the stature of the program he comes from mitigates the risk somewhat, but in Sarkisian’s case it may actually increase it. UW was never USC – even in the Don James era, the Trojans won more Pac-10 titles – and certainly isn’t now. In fact, the Huskies aren’t even competitive in the Northwest at the moment, so a healthy dose of underdog mentality would get a lot more mileage than the traditional arrogance, but it’s hard to imagine Sarkisian has had much underdog bred into him as a Trojan.

One of the amusing sidelights of the UW search was the notion that the school should somehow go retro and hire a modern-day James – when in fact Don James couldn’t possibly get hired by Washington in this era.

There is already a segment of the Husky constituency in a dither that Emmert and Woodward couldn’t moneywhip a box-office name – a Mike Leach or his equivalent – to star in their B movie. They will settle for Sarkisian only because of his USC credits. The idea of a low-profile head coach from the Mid-American Conference with a 25-19 career record – which is what James was at Kent State – would have had Husky tailgaters hurling empty chardonnay bottles at Emmert’s office window.

But only $20 chardonnays, of course.

It’s the same vacant theorizing that has some Cougar fans – Cougar fans – insistent that Paul Wulff won’t get it done simply because his resume was compiled at the FCS level, never mind the countless examples of those coaches who moved up to great success.

More than his own resume, Sarkisian’s report card will teeter on his willingness to lure some top-shelf assistants and, as always, their ability to evaluate, recruit and develop – not simply select, as USC mostly does. These are the areas that went wanting under Willingham, whose best efforts at UW may only be appreciated by a less-busy Seattle police department.

On Saturday, the Huskies concluded their 0-12 hell – the first winless season for a Pac-10 team in 28 years.

Just reference purposes, Ty, that’s downtrodden.