SEATTLE — On a cool autumn evening Saturday evening, math finally confirmed what everyone watching the Huskies has known since the last weekend in August.
This is not a bowl team. Nor a good team for that matter.
This season is officially lost.
Several weeks before Notre Dame — and it’s only fitting that this loss came against the Irish, Tyrone Willingham’s former employer — made bowl eligibility a mathematical impossibility, the play of the Huskies led everyone to assume it.
But now it is official. Now we know that Willingham’s fourth season at Washington will end like his first three: with a losing record. Only this one will almost certainly be worse than the last three.
It’s hard now to look at the schedule and see any wins for the Huskies save the Apple Cup in late November. And given the unpredictable nature of the rivalry game, a win over Washington State is no gimme either. Two-and-10, 1-11, 0-12, does it even matter at this point?
The only intriguing story lines left for this fall and winter are trying to figure out when Tyrone Willingham will be fired and who will replace him.
No matter how this season ends, it’s safe to say that Washington football is a mess.
Still.
For the fifth time since Don James retired in 1993, the Huskies will be looking for a new coach this offseason. Just like in 2005, the 2009 recruiting class will be abysmal. That means a few years down the road — let’s say in 2013 when fifth-year seniors will be few and far between because so many freshman have had to play this year, and the fourth-year seniors will be limited because of the current recruiting struggles — Husky fans can look forward to another season of youth and inexperience.
So now what?
UW athletic director Scott Woodward has maintained since his hiring that he won’t make a decision on the coaching situation until the season is over, but at this point nothing would be surprising. Let Willingham finish out the season? I could see it happening. Announce his firing this morning? That wouldn’t surprise me either.
From talking to players these last few weeks, it seems like Willingham hasn’t lost control of the team, and the Huskies still look like they’re playing hard. Those are two things that Woodward is looking at while weighing his options.
But the fact that the Huskies are playing hard, that they are, as safety Nate Williams put it, “Playing to our best ability,” almost makes this worse.
If a team that hasn’t given up on its coach and its season is still losing this badly on a weekly basis, then the distance between this season and a winning one might be greater than anyone imagined.
Now that goals like a bowl game and a winning record are officially unattainable, the Huskies say pride is the new driving force.
“Playing for pride, playing for the pride of your teammates,” said tight end Michael Gottlieb, part of a senior class that has known nothing but losing records at Washington. “We’re a family, we love each other and we’re going to play hard for each other.”
The Huskies say they’re still confident, that they think wins can happen and that better days are ahead.
“We’ve just got to be better,” said linebacker Mason Foster. “Play harder and make more plays. We’ve got to make plays as 11 guys on the field. It’s not about the coaches, it’s about our 11 guys against their 11 guys.”
But if tangible goals weren’t enough to drive this team to victories, how far can pride take the Huskies?
“We’ve got to play for ourselves, the people around us,” said cornerback Quinton Richardson. “We’ve just got to keep going, take the punches.”
With five game’s worth of punches still on the schedule, this season seems destined to go down as one of the worst in Husky history.
USC is the next team ready to take its shots on the purple and gold punching bag, so as bad as thing were these last few weeks, they only figure to get worse.
There are no winners here. Not the coaches whose jobs are in danger, not the players who are suffering through humiliating loss after humiliating loss, not the athletic director who will have to make a coaching change in his first year on the job, and certainly not the fans who sacrifice their time and money to follow a team that is going nowhere.
No winners. Well none except for the teams lining up against the Huskies every week.
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on UW sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
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