BERKELEY, Calif. — Just six years ago, Tyrone Willingham was at the top of his profession. Today, however, he will end his four-year career at Washington at the bottom.
In 2002, Willingham won 10 games in his first year at Notre Dame — a year removed from a seven-year career at Stanford that featured four bowl games, including the 2000 Rose Bowl. He was named Sportsman of the Year by The Sporting News, and the buzz around South Bend, Ind., was that Notre Dame football was back.
Yet by this afternoon, Willingham will be out of a job for the second time since getting fired at Notre Dame in 2004, and his tenure at Washington will be remember mostly as a failure. He is 11-36 in four UW seasons, and if the Huskies lose today as expected, Willingham will have presided over an 0-12 season that will go down as the worst in university history.
In addition to a losing record, Willingham has clashed with the media and has been criticized for his inability to relate to boosters and former players. Recently, Willingham also has taken criticism for bringing up the mess he inherited when asked about Washington’s current struggles, something many interpret as his refusing to take responsibility for the state of Washington football. He is disliked by many Washington and Notre Dame fans, who blame the man for both program’s struggles, yet he is still revered by Stanford fans, former players and administrators.
While many will be happy to see Willingham go, not everyone will have bad memories of Washington’s outgoing coach. Current Husky players understand that winning is the name of the game in college sports and don’t question why their coach is on his way out, but they still say they’ll be sad to see him go.
“He’s given me a lot not only as a player, but in terms of being a man,” junior linebacker Donald Butler said. “He’s shown me the right way it’s supposed to be done. As I continue to play this game, the man, the person I become will be attributed to the things he taught me. I think I speak for every single guy that he’s recruited, because he’s just that type of man in terms of giving you the things that will help you in life.”
Even UW president Mark Emmert, who had a hand in Willingham’s firing, has good things to say about the soon to be former coach.
“Of course people will remember the record and the performance during games, and in doing that they’ll miss a lot of the positive things that he’s done for the university and for these football players,” Emmert said, mentioning the off-field problems with the program Willingham took over.
“Tyrone did a fabulous job restoring integrity to the football program. We’ve had no NCAA issues of consequence; we’ve no major off the field problems of consequence; the kids have a graduation rate that’s second only to Stanford. All of those things are in significant part due to Tyrone’s influence.”
Yet in the end, Emmert and his athletic director, Scott Woodward, realized that integrity without wins wasn’t enough.
“My approach to anything at the university — and it’s the same whether it’s football or any of our academic programs — is that we bring in the best kids we can bring in here, and then we have an obligation to do everything we can to help them be champions,” he said. “And we had to make a change, because while we were getting three quarters of what we needed — and that included all the academic issues and the development issues of these kids and their success off the field — we also need to allow them the opportunity to be successful on the field, and we need that combination of things, not just one or the other.”
Yet for all of the praise heaped on Willingham by his current players and Emmert, something clearly wasn’t right at Washington, as is evident in the record on the field.
Roy Lewis, a cornerback who played under Willingham from 2005 to 2007, said many Huskies had a hard time buying into the message Willingham was preaching.
“I think at times what Willingham implemented was good, but I don’t think he got across to enough players, and sometimes that could lead to a lot of different opinions as far as players are concerned,” said Lewis, now a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers practice squad.
“The whole thing when your coaching a team is to make sure everybody is buying into what’s going on, and if you don’t have guys buying in, that definitely makes the job tough. It doesn’t matter how great of a coach you are, if you don’t have guys who want to believe and buy in to a program, then ultimately the program won’t do so well.”
Sophomore safety Nate Williams said it’s ultimately up to the players to be on the same page, and though he put the blame on the players not the coaches, he agreed that not all of this year’s team was buying in.
“We’re 0-11,” said Williams. “I’m not trying to call anyone out or anything, but there were obviously some problems on the team this year. When you’re 0-11 there’s obviously a problem, and something needs to change so it can be fixed.”
That change will begin following today’s game. Willingham has not yet made public his plans beyond this weekend, but he has not ruled out a return to coaching. And regardless of the fact that his UW career ends today, both he and his players have said they don’t expect any extra emotion from the man who has made a career of being a stoic presence on the field.
“We definitely don’t expect it,” senior tight end Michael Gottlieb said. “We know that’s not really his approach. It never has been, it never will be. If you’re looking for some personal sentiment from him, his door’s always open to us, you can always come in and share personal moments with him. But when we’re on the field, it’s always business, that’s how it’s going to be, that’s what we expect.”
So it ends today. No emotion, no big speeches, just a final game and the Willingham era at Washington is over. And sometime this afternoon, Willingham will walk off the field with, as he has talked about before, an “overall disappointment of the things that we have not done.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on UW sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
