Huskies feel they’re on ‘brink of a pretty big season’

SEATTLE – The Washington Huskies haven’t done anything yet. Not for a long time.

Seven years have passed since the University of Washington football program went to a bowl game. It’s been even longer since the Huskies have been a national – or Pac-10, for that matter – contender.

And now, almost 20 years after UW earned a part of its last national championship, the program might finally be on the verge of a rebirth.

“It’s really exciting because that’s really one of the reasons that I came here,” said senior defensive tackle Cameron Elisara, a Spokane native who considered Nebraska and Oregon before signing with UW before the 2006-07 school year. “I had the opportunity to go to programs that had already gone to national championships, and I chose the University of Washington because I felt like I wanted to be a part of something different, to turn around a program.

“I saw that opportunity, and it’s starting to come together.”

Two years removed from the nadir of the UW football program – an 0-12 season that included nine losses by 20 or more points – the Huskies may well be on the verge of getting back to national prominence. A relatively new coaching staff, a wealth of talent at the skill positions and a watered-down Pac-10 Conference all have Husky Nation entertaining thoughts of grandeur.

Star quarterback Jake Locker, who grew up in Ferndale but was too young to remember the great UW teams of the early 1990s, said this year’s Huskies have gotten as much attention as any Washington team he’s seen.

“I think there’s a lot of excitement around this program right now, maybe even more than there had been at that point,” he said last week.

For the first time since 2003, the Huskies received votes in a preseason poll. The eight total votes in the Associated Press poll ranked 39th in the country, while one anonymous media member picked UW to win the Pac-10 in the conference’s annual media poll.

The expectations are pretty high, considering the depths to which this program has dropped in recent years. This year’s senior class has gone 9-28 over the past three years and was a part of the first UW teams to finish 10th in the conference in back-to-back years.

“It was tough,” said senior linebacker Mason Foster. “But making all my friends up here, we definitely stayed close, we stayed strong together. … We persevered and stayed together, and now we’re looking forward to making it through the storm.”

The 0-12 season was worse than anyone could have expected, especially someone like Elisara, who signed with the Huskies entertaining high hopes of bringing the program back to respectability.

“When we were 0-12, I was like, man, I’m halfway through my career here and things certainly don’t look like they’re going that way,” Elisara said. “But you just have to keep looking forward, keep looking forward, and try not to get down. It was after that season that the new coaches came in, and optimism came with them. And then everybody started turning things around.

“And look at where we are now. We’re on the brink of a pretty big season.”

The senior class wouldn’t be satisfied to go out with one “big season.” Much like second-year head coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff, the UW seniors are hoping to bring back another golden era of Husky football. Snapping the seven-year bowl drought would certainly be a step in the right direction.

“It was a goal of mine when I first came here and something I was hoping to be a part of,” Locker said. “To have the opportunity be able to do that now, and to possibly go out that way, is something that’s pretty exciting.”

Former UW coach Jim Lambright, who was defensive coordinator on the Huskies’ co-national championship team in 1991 and later succeeded Don James as head coach, is also pretty excited about what the next few years of Husky football might hold.

“What you see is a combination of hope and enthusiasm,” he said, “and those coaches are demanding it.”

The current Huskies are using UW’s storied football history as a benchmark of where they want to get the program.

“That’s always been a huge thing,” Elisara said of UW’s football tradition. “We watch old film of the early ’90s, the U-Dub teams with the cut-off jerseys. That’s the kind of thing we want to go back to. That’s something you watch as a kid and aspire to be. And now we have an opportunity to get back to that.”

Current players, alumni and UW football fans haven’t been able to dream big for a long time. While this year’s Huskies haven’t done anything yet, they’ve at least given people a reason to believe.

“When I first got here, I didn’t really realize how big UW football was around here,” Foster said. “After my first week as a freshman, I realized this is one of the biggest things going out here. It’s big for this program, it’s big to everyone around Seattle, it’s big to this school.

“So it would mean a lot to bring back the tradition to the University of Washington.”