NCAA Football - Willingham is out of Washington

By Audrey Nolan

The humiliation of losing 33-7 on Saturday’s game against Notre Dame, made the directors and managers of Washington to reconsider on having Tyrone Willingham as the head coach of their football team. They decided that he will not be coming back for next season. Willingham declared that he was not even thinking on resigning but after eight days of meetings, Scott Woodard, the athletic director said that he is not going to be replaced during the season but for sure will be replace for next year.

The University director, Mark Emmert, who is also involved in this situation, stated that they started the conversations of removing Willingham as head coach after the Huskies lost 34-13 to Oregon State. He also explained that Scott and Tyrone have been talking lately on looking for the better options for the team and the best way to handle the transition to the new coaching for next year.

About this matter Willingham said that "We didn't win enough football games. That's it. Hopefully, we've done all the other things right, [and] it's a good strong program for someone to jump into and do things."

The University of Washington is starting the search for a new coach, and the competition is difficult since there are many good prospects for the job. The USC offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin is supposed to be among the prospects to be considered for the vacant. He has plenty of experience with the Pac-10 and he was in the staff that made the USC national champions during last season. There are some other candidates to be studied that are very capable of getting the position. Washington will try to have the new head coach for the end of the season, that way the team will start a new training program from the beginning.

Some of the team players were shocked about the news because for some of them, playing with Willingham was the reason they got into Washington in the first place. However, there are other players that think that the change will be good for the team. Each one has their own reasons.

Willingham was hired by the Huskies four years ago in a five year contract and after the team suffered a complicated separation from former Coach Rick Neuheisel. With Willingham, the team got more stable and organized but the performance has not been the best. They gave him time for the team to improve but during his first three seasons with the Huskies, they were not able to win more than five games per season and they have lost 13 of their last 15 games at home.

Tyrone Willingham started his coaching career in 1995 at the University of Stanford; in his seven seasons with the team he got record of 44-36-1. He also had a Pac-10 Conference championship and four appearances in the bowl game with the 2000 Rose Bowl included. In December 2001 he was hired by Notre Dame and during his first year with the team he won several awards as coach of the year. However, during the 2003 season the team had a really bad performance and finished 5-7, the worst record a Notre Dame team had in 47 years, and then after another losing season in 2004, Willingham was fired from the Fighting Irish in November that year.

Now we hope the best for Willingham in his future as well as for the Washington University Huskies. Nevertheless, we would like to see both Willingham and Washington improving the records for the remaining part of the 2008-2009 season.

About the Author

Audrey Nolan has been a prominent writer on daily College Football season reviews, sports news and sportsbook industry updates for many exceptional sports web sites. You may reprint this article in its full content, please note no modifications to it are accepted.