SEATTLE — There was a time when the University of Washington football team thought this week’s road trip to face USC might well be the first of two visits to the Los Angeles area.
The Huskies’ preseason hopes of making it to the Rose Bowl, as colossally wishful as those hopes might have been, were still alive as late as last Saturday afternoon.
However, the loss to Oregon, which marked the Huskies’ second double-digit defeat in a span of three games, has left UW out of the Rose Bowl hunt, but with plenty of postseason options still out there for the taking.
The Huskies are in a much better situation than red-hot USC (7-2, 4-2 league). The Trojans have won four of five games — losing only in an overtime thriller against No. 3 Stanford 11 days ago — and sit atop the Pacific-12 Conference’s South Division. However, they are out of the bowl picture because of NCAA sanctions levied after the family of former player Reggie Bush was found to have received benefits from a USC booster.
So no matter what happens on Saturday afternoon, the Huskies will be bowl-bound at season’s end while the on-probation Trojans will not.
By the way these two teams have been playing in recent weeks, it might be difficult to tell which program is the one that’s bowl-eligible. Suffice to say, UW coach Steve Sarkisian wasn’t in much of a bowl-talking mood this week.
“I just want to get right,” Sarkisian said on Monday, two days after a 34-17 loss to Oregon knocked UW out of hopes for a Pac-12 title.
“I want us to play well. These kids work too hard not to have the experience of playing really well.”
There is still plenty of incentive, even though the Huskies (6-3 overall, 4-2 in the Pac-12) won’t be smelling roses for the 11th year in a row. The very real possibility of two Pac-12 teams qualifying for Bowl Championship Series bowls leaves UW battling teams like Arizona State, California and, yes, even Rick Neuheisel’s once-dead UCLA squad for the Pac-12’s top non-BCS bowl slots.
That could mean a return trip to San Diego for another Holiday Bowl, or possibly the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.
The Dec. 29 Alamo Bowl, facing a team like Kansas State or Texas, could be the top reward still out there. The bowl gets first dibs on the Pac-12’s first non-BCS qualifier. Last year, UW was passed up in favor of an Arizona team that got blown out by Oklahoma State.
Should the Huskies’ recent struggles continue, they could end up playing in the Dec. 31 Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas), the Dec. 22 Las Vegas Bowl or the Dec. 31 Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco.
In the often-confusing world of bowl games, the Huskies would actually be better off getting a December trip to El Paso than they would be going to Las Vegas or San Francisco. But the Alamo and Holiday bowls represent the golden bids for UW as it prepares for the final three games of the regular season.
That the Huskies already have locked up bowl eligibility is a bit of a victory in and of itself. The last time UW came into the month of November with the minimum six wins already in its pocket was 10 years ago, when Neuheisel’s 2001 Huskies got off to a 7-1 start on the way to a Holiday Bowl loss to Texas.
Sarkisian said he’s really not concerned with where the Huskies are practicing during the holiday season.
“The reality of it is, we’ve got three tough ball games ahead of us, all of which have significant meaning along the way,” he said. “I think one of the worst mistakes we can do right now is start worrying where we might be going and not focusing on the task at hand. And that’s SC.”
Notable
The good-natured war of words between old friends continued on Tuesday, when USC head coach Lane Kiffin was asked about Sarkisian’s earlier comment that USC quarterback Matt Barkley is looking like a better pro prospect than Stanford’s Andrew Luck. “That really didn’t help me at all when he said (last season) that we are the most talented team in the country,” Kiffin said on the conference call Tuesday. “All he’s doing is pointing out is we have all these great players, so we must not be very good coaches.” … The Huskies announced that the Nov. 19 game at Oregon State will begin at 12:30 p.m. … Junior safety Justin Glenn was back working with the first team Tuesday after suffering a foot injury in Saturday’s loss. … UW defensive coordinator Nick Holt said Tuesday that he felt bad about his Saturday comment that the Huskies “would rather play USC than Oregon” made such waves in Los Angeles. The comment was apparently posted at the USC athletic facility and has been a hot topic of conversation this week. “I’m sure they’re looking at it like I was trying to disrespect them, which I was not,” said Holt, a former USC assistant. “I’m the last guy that’s going to disrespect the University of Southern California — the institution, the players and their coaches.”
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