The big story around campus today continues to be yesterday’s news that Tyrone Willingham is out at the end of the season.
Juan Garcia, who has been turning down interview requests almost all season, actually talked today. I joked with him about avoiding the media for so long, and Garcia, who has always been gracious and honest with the media when he has talked to us, explained that this season has been really frustrating and he doesn’t want to say anything he might regret out of frustration.
Anyway, here’s what he had to say:
Reaction to the news?
“I was frustrated. Me and him have got a good relationship, I see eye-to-eye with him on a lot of stuff, with the way he looks at things. I don’t know if it was the right decision. Obviously we weren’t winning so other people thought it was. I didn’t like it, it’s unfortunate, but it happens.”
How will this change things?
“I don’t know. We’re 0-7, so maybe we can play harder for him. He’s got five games left and I’ve got five games here. It’s just a frustrating thing all around.”
Do players feel a sense of responsibility when a coach is fired?
“I do. I feel a little bit like I let him down. I’m one of the older guys on the team and maybe I should have said this or that to a young team. It’s frustrating. I’m really frustrated right now, this is the second head coach since I’ve been here that’s been fired, and I told the younger guys after we went 0-2, ‘You guys don’t want to go through a coaching change. It’s bad. Coaches will try to come in here and change the whole mentality.’ That’s what I tried to tell those guys. But a little bit I feel like I am responsible. I wish I could have done more.”
Asked about his memories of the last coaching change here, Garcia said he intially had a hard time adjusting to Willingham, though he has sense become of fan. He also hinted that not everyone got on board back then.
“It was hard on me. For like a year, trying to get adjusted to coach Willingham was pretty tough. He had his new philosophies on the way he wanted things run. And it sucked, it wasn’t good. Eventually people bought in, I bought in, but unfortunately not everybody bought in.”
Will you guys try to send him off with a good finish?
“I haven’t been in the locker room yet with all those guys, but for me it is. I love him, I have a good relationship with him. Part of it, I feel like I didn’t do enough. I’ll be playing extra hard, I don’t care how much my foot hurts anymore. I know these are his last five games and I’ll be playing harder than I’ve ever played before.”
How is that foot doing?
“It bugs me here and there. It’s more of a frustrating thing. I know I’m not the same player I could have been this year, that’s the frustrating part. But I’m not making excuses. Right now it’s finally starting to feel 100 percent. I’ve cut down a lot of my weight and I can move now, but it’s later in the season it kind feels like it’s a little too late.”
Garcia said he also suffered a minor knee injury in the last game, but he was at practice today and said the knee should be fine by Saturday.
Running backs coach Steve Gervais, who is in his first year here after leaving Skyline High School, said the staff was somewhat expecting the news.
“I just think there has been so much speculation around for weeks now that I think the coaching staff in general, and myself, we all took it in stride,” he said. “I don’t think it was anything foreign to us the fact that we knew there were expectations going into the season of what we had to do for coach Willingham to be here in the future. I think as a general thought we all took it pretty well in stride.”
Asked if he regretted leaving Skyline to come here now that he may be out of a job soon, he said, “No, absolutely not. As I said last spring, it was a time in my life that I was looking for something different in the area of football and coaching, and I still look back on it as a great decision.”
How have players been reacting?
“I think they had the same awareness that the coaching staff did, that if we weren’t successful to a certain point there was that potential for change. And at 0-7, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that there is a good potential for that.”
Gervais also said the staff is waiting to be told how they will handle recruiting from here on out. He and some other coaches were planning on going to LA early to recruit prior to the news, so he said they expected to hear soon what the plan moving forward will be.
Offensive line coach Mike Denbrock, who was also on Willingham’s staff at Notre Dame when Willingham was between the end of the season and a bowl game, said that he’s trying not to focus on the news and instead focus on the last five games.
“Well, we put our heads down and go back to work for the next five weeks here and do what’s right by this football program, and what’s right by these players in particular – make sure they’re cared for, pointed in the right direction and give them every opportunity to be successful here down the stretch.”
He pointed out that Monday is their main game-planning day, which made yesterday difficult with the Willingham news. Asked if it was his hardest game-planning session, he laughed and said, “It is because USC is the No. 1 team in the country in total defense. We didn’t exactly light up the scoreboard offensively last week. It’s a nice little challenge and you add this on top of it and you have your hands full.”
Do you want to stay here?
“I love the University of Washington. I love the kids in this program. My wife and I love living in this area of the country. I think this is a great place to play and be involved in college football. Those are questions to be answered down the road. I don’t know if I’d even have the opportunity to do that. But I have a lot of respect for this program and its history and tradition. we’ll see what happens.”
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