Why UW’s LA Bowl will also be a reunion for Jedd Fisch and Rob Gronkowski
Jedd Fisch’s relationship with Rob Gronkowski began with a long-overdue homecoming, a helicopter and a Guinness World Record.
Back in 2021, Fisch, the current Washington coach, was preparing for his first season leading Arizona. He was trying to drum up interest in the Wildcats, a program that went winless in 2020 and hadn’t won a conference game since October 2019. So he called upon one of Arizona’s most notable alumni: Gronkowski, the legendary NFL tight end who’d just won his fourth Super Bowl a few months earlier.
Gronkowski hadn’t returned to Arizona, where he’d played from 2007-08, in nearly a decade. But he didn’t make the trip to Tucson, Ariz., simply for nostalgia. Dressed in shoulder pads and donning a Wildcat helmet, Gronkowski arrived to set the world record for the highest altitude catch of an American football. Aided by former Wildcat linebacker Donnie Salum in a helicopter flying around Arizona Stadium, Gronkowski caught a ball dropped from 600 feet in the air, a record that stood until 2024.
“I got to know him,” Fisch said. “Know his family. He was one of the first people I talked to when I got offered the last job. Coach (Bill) Belichick put me in touch with him.”
So Saturday will be a bit of a reunion for Fisch and Gronkowski, the official host of the LA Bowl. Washington is scheduled to face Mountain West champion Boise State in the LA Bowl at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles with a 5 p.m. kickoff.
“It is fun to be part of the Gronk Bowl,” Fisch said.
Of course, reconnecting with Gronkowski isn’t enough to mitigate some of the challenges UW will face after landing in the LA Bowl. Most notably, the game is extremely early this year – one of the two earliest games of the 2025 bowl season – and Fisch admitted the Huskies are probably going to miss out on around eight practices they might’ve gotten if they’d ended up in a bowl game scheduled closer to New Year’s Day.
Additionally, any extra recruiting bonuses of playing in the West Coast’s premier talent hotbed are nullified by the dead period, which started Dec. 1. Programs are not allowed to have in-person contact with recruits on or off campus until Jan. 1, meaning UW cannot invite players to the game. Fisch said he hoped players interested in the Huskies will consider buying tickets and going to the game.
“All those kids from Southern California can see the type of program you can go to,” Fisch said. “We have a ton of players from the state of California. Some of the best players in the country chose to come here either this year, or last, or the year before, from Southern California. So I’m hopeful that the fact we’re playing in L.A. will really help us market our program even more.”
Fisch admitted UW’s tight turnaround from Selection Sunday to the LA Bowl will be squeezed even more by the National Football Foundation’s (NFF) Annual Awards Dinner in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
UW senior running back Jonah Coleman is a finalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy, awarded by the NFF, and will travel to Las Vegas with Fisch, running backs coach Scottie Graham and athletic director Pat Chun and their families Tuesday afternoon for the dinner before flying back to Seattle on Wednesday morning. The Huskies will travel to Los Angeles Wednesday evening after practice.
“It’ll be a crazy week,” Fisch said, “but I’m looking forward to it.”
Despite the schedule crunch necessitated by the LA Bowl, Fisch said there are some advantages of playing in an early bowl game. UW, as a quarter school, begins its winter classes Jan. 4. Fisch said if UW was selected in a later game – say the Holiday Bowl on Jan. 2 – his players would’ve had a one-day break, so he’s glad his players and coaching staff can get some extra time to recuperate from a long season.
Fisch also said his team was able to recoup some of their lost practice time during the past week because the early signing period has been earlier than the past two seasons. Back in 2023, for example, high-school prospects had to wait until Dec. 20 to sign, meaning coaches were on the road recruiting for most of December.
This season, with his 2026 recruiting class that ranks No. 12 nationally already signed, Fisch and his coaches were able to stay in Seattle and get four extra practices in over the past week.
Fisch also said he expects his entire roster to be present at the game Saturday, and said he hasn’t heard about any of his players opting out of the game. That includes Coleman (knee) and junior wide receiver Denzel Boston (ankle).
“They’re both playing,” Fisch said. “They’re good to go.”
The UW coach also announced senior linebacker Jacob Manu will play because bowl games do not count against a player’s four-game redshirt limit, though he said senior cornerback Tacario Davis is questionable as he continues to deal with a hamstring injury.
Injuries aside, Fisch said he doesn’t intend to use the bowl to run out a young team and give his underclassmen experience.
“We’re planning to bring the same team, and play the same amount of reps as we did when we played Oregon two weeks ago,” Fisch said. “Our job is to go try to do everything we possibly can to beat a team that played in the (College Football Playoff) a year ago and won the Mountain West this year.”
Fisch also doubled down on his statements from Sunday about teams opting out of bowl games. The UW coach said he particularly resonated with Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea’s quotes about the importance of bowl games and valuing the time remaining with this year’s team.
“You have an opportunity to play in a bowl game, you have to treat it as such and enjoy every moment of it,” Fisch said. “These kids are rewarded for it. … These bowl games are special. I don’t understand the opt outs.”