Lunatic fringe at it again

Published 11:04 pm Wednesday, October 17, 2007

They’re At It Again. Or Still.

Read them on message boards and letters to the editor. Hear them roar on radio rant shows.

In an age when college football takes precedence over national defense, many Dawg followers want everyone fired, from Ty Willingham to Mark Emmert to Sluggo, The Laughing Moose.

The Fringe, Lunatic branch, is blessed with neither patience nor much memory. Sadly, we live in an age of instant gratification, microwave popcorn and diets that promise a 30-pound weight loss in 13 minutes.

The mania has reached the rebuilding of a college football program, an endeavor that requires time and patience.

Only, few want to give it time. And patience? Forget it.

In this intolerant environment, it’s hardly shocking that Willingham’s seat is edging toward scorching, warmer than even the days following last season’s humiliating loss to Stanford.

The Washington Huskies are 2-4 and on the business end of a four-game losing streak. Under Willingham, they are 9-20 in 21/2 seasons. So now, the coach is seen by many as one step above the Earth’s initial life form that crawled out of the swamps.

Let’s review: Willingham hasn’t completed his third season as head coach at Washington. He was brought in to replace the formerly exalted Keith Gilbertson, who fell on his sword midway through a 1-10 season in 2004 after bravely having taken over a program that, at best, was drowning in scandal, deceit and embarrassment.

Gilbertson took the job two weeks before the season started. He had zero shot at succeeding and he knew it. The Fringe forgets that.

The Huskies are halfway through their third season of separation from 1-10, a year in which their only victory came against San Jose State.

The Fringe complains about lack of improvement in the program. Apparently, it forgets Casey Paus, 700 yards yielded to Cal and 30,000 empty seats at Husky Stadium.

While it rails about 2-4, the Fringe also seems to forget that the Huskies are playing the schedule rated as the toughest in the country. It’s hard to argue with that, what with the current No. 1 team in the AP poll (Ohio State), a former No. 1 team (USC), a former No. 2 team (Cal, now No. 10), the current No. 7 team (Oregon), 7-0 Arizona State (No. 12). And don’t forget 7-0 Hawaii, the nation’s 17th-ranked team.

So it can scream all it wants. In the past three seasons, the UW program has slogged through six-game losing streaks each year. Even so, last season’s 5-7 mark represented a breakthrough of sorts as the program’s best record since the 2003 team finished 6-6.

So why is the Fringe basing its claim of lack of improvement on a 2007 schedule interspersed with six top-20 teams? Are they the same hyper-optimistic geniuses who looked at the schedule, looked at the UW’s immediate past and somehow squeezed out an eight-win prediction?

Lost in the hand-wringing is the notion that a firing would only perpetuate the pattern that left the program in the position it’s in now. The act of shuffling coaching staffs like so many playing cards just begs recruiters from the competition to point to the UW program and correctly state to an athlete and family that the Huskies are in shambles and have little idea of how to dig out of it.

That marked improvement has taken this long is an indication of how low the program was. It wasn’t Willingham’s fault that Washington was at the bottom 10 percent of all NCAA Division 1 programs.

For all the problems UW football has now, lack of continuity of coaching staffs is the most serious. It scares away big-time recruits, which the roster most certainly lacks today.

Washington cannot compete with the elite in a surging Pac-10 Conference if it scares away big-time recruits and is left fighting over athletes whose choices are Idaho, San Diego State and Baylor.

Willingham is in the third of a five-year contract. He should be allowed to fulfill it. Evaluate then if athletic director Todd Turner should make a move.

For now, though, it’s time for patience — however unfashionable that may be.

Sports columnist John Sleeper: sleeper@heraldnet.com. To reach Sleeper’s blog, click on cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet/danglingparticiples.