Chris Petersen expected to be named Washington head coach today. Will be one of highest paid in PAC-12.
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) December 6, 2013
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Chris Petersen to Washington
Should have gone when he was a hotter property and could have had a better job.
So long, Fraud State. Nice knowing you and your bogus claims of elite status.
Fraud State? A 92-12 record in 8 seasons under Peterson? 6 top 25 finishes and 11 win+ seasons? 5 bowl wins? Are we looking at different teams?
all vs. a strength of schedule that rivals the Big Ten!
...or the Big12 ...or the ACC. I'm making my "Section 1" stand here against people who are badmouthing the Big10. Statistically, both the ACC and Big12 are worse conferences this year, and the SEC is only marginally better. The PAC12 is a lot better, though.
To be fair, TCU looked like beasts in that conference too. Since moving to the Big 12 they've gone 11-14.
and their move from the Mountain West to Pac-12.
BSU played one or two legitimate teams a year and 10-11 tomato cans. Petersen is a very good coach, but he has to prove that he can get these kind of results against legitimate, elite competition on a regular basis. I think this move makes sense for both sides and both sides could benefit.
You clearly have some insecurities.
Yeah, it's not even a clever play on words
Something like "Bogus State" or " Potato mashers" would have been better. Not any more true, just more clever.
Lousy State woulda been pretty good, too.
How about "Boy-Sea State." They played their games with a veritable sea of boys rather than men, thus making them an inferior program. MARVIN NAILED IT!
have to say that Washington is a pretty good job. Awesome part of the country, tremendous potential and a history of semi-recent success without the expectations of other top level jobs. Now that that program has returned to being a high level Pac 12 team I think a lot of coaches would eat that job up if offered.
The whole leaving sooner thing is a load of bunk. Petersen has been at the top of every job opening for the last 5+ years. And did people forget he just turned down USC?
I've always been a big fan of Peterson and have secretly wished he'd come to Michigan for several years now. I'm also sad to see him leave Boise St. though. I loved what he did with that program and he seems like he is a man of character. It was refreshing to see someone with that kind of success, buck the trend of greed and cut-throat ambition in college football.
Great hire for Washington.
This blows my mind. He turns down SEC jobs, Penn State, Ohio State, UCLA, USC, but says yes to Washington? Unreal.
Regardless, he is a great coach and Huskie fans should be thrilled. I'm always happy to see Washington get a leg up on Leach and Washington State, so good for them.
maybe he likes that part of the country b/c of family or other reasons. That can be a pretty big factor to a lot of people.
Yeah, he just doesn't seem like your typical coach where ambitions to be at the best schools with the most money is the driving force in his decision.
Washington makes sense for a guy like Chris Petersen. He's not stepping into a huge pressure cooker in a part of the country he doesn't know. Rather, he's upgrading to a football school in the same region of the country where he'll be utilizing the recruiting connections he's built up for his entire coaching career. I very much see the draw.
Might be because he sees that his stock and Boise State's stock is falling. They've fallen off the national radar ever since Kellen Moore graduated and I think before Petersen might've thought he had a good thing going, but now if he sees the Boise State ship sinking, he might be thinking it's time to get out of Dodge while he still can. This might be the end of Boise's run of national significance
I am not familar with BSU recruiting, but it seems to me that it may be important to him to stay in the Norhtwest if that is where his best recuiting ties are. It might be easier for him to pull in recruits at UW that at an SEC school. USC might just be a little bit toxic give the damage done by Kiffin and not keeping Orgeron (and Orgeron's decision to quit rather than coach the bowl).
Admittedly, this is kind of pulled out of the air since I just can't tolerate watching BSU on that damn blue field.
It's a great job for him. He'll come in as a rock star. He'll be paid extremely well. The cost of living there is much much better than at USC. The expectations are reasonable. The fan base won't be calling for his head after 2 1/2 years. He will have an opportunity to create a long-term legacy there if he chooses to do it, much like Don James did.
... was a great coach for UW. And he was an assistant at Michigan before that, under Bump Elliot. This is s great hire for UW.
Agree with all you say.
I just thought that it might also be a smart move for him as my hypothesis was that he will closer to his recruting base than going to SEC or even USC. Howeva, looking at his BSU's roster, I counted 37 kids from Cali, against 29 from Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Montana combined. So, yeah, I'm wrong.
It is important to look at where in Cali they are from. It's a huge state and recruiting in the southern part is very different than the northern part.
Not really, in terms of football recruiting. Both northern CA and SoCal have tons of talent, and it varies year to year who has more (not to mention parts of central CA like Fresno and Bakersfield representing well).
He's still close to his recruting base, relative to an SEC job.
Regardless of recruiting, he also knows the northwest region really well. He must hear stories of friends that travel all over the northwest for fishing, hiking, family, and he has probably vacationed, traveled, and visited a bunch of areas as well.
So when a recruit in every-day-speak says he's going to visit his Grandma for Christmas in Gleed, just up the road from Yakima on the "12", Peterson would probably already know where this is, approximately, and share immediately commonality with the kid, talking about how he's heard the fishing is good around there, etc. Hit the ground running without having to learn everything anew culturally and geographically.
I agree with other posters that this is also a lower stress opportunity for a solid team in a high-end conference. He will have the opportunity to grow the program to his liking without as many angry fans making noise (a la USC).
I'm really surprised he left, but perhaps the best opportunity for his personality type and past experience.
Living in Southern California, I know that Boise's taken some smaller school kids from here, perhaps for depth, perhaps hoping to develop with a redshirt year. They just took a kid from the local high school as a preferred walk-on at kicker.
Petersen seems like the kind of guy who would prioritize a better fit over a bigger name. From a family perspective, going from Boise to Los Angeles would have been a much more dramatic shift than going from Boise to Seattle. This actually seems like the ideal situation for him.
Good move for Petersen and a great hire for UW. He knows the area for recruiting and he has a child in need of medical care available at UW's and Seattle's medical centers. I think this may have been a motivating factor. Seattle will welcome Petersen.
Maybe he didn't want to come into a program that was falling apart. Washington didnt just fire it's coach for incompetence or lose him after sanctions and scandal. Their coach left to take a better job but left the program in a great place. I'd much rather inherit Washington's current program than what Rich Rod left or the PSU situation or the Lane Kiffin mess, etc..
For staying where he wanted to be, and taking the job he wanted. Clearly he has a value system that he is following, and it likely doesn't resemble yours, and doesn't appear to be all about prestige or making the most money.
Not that its not a great job. It absolutely is. It is not an iconic program, but that place is beautiful, and has a great football atmosphere.
I love the Pac10, and its awesome that Sarkesian, Mora, RichRod, Peterson, ((dude from ASU??)) are all there. Gonna be fun to watch!
He's the ASU coach.
Until this year he seemed kind of toolish (bailing on programs [Rice & Pitt] in consecutive years will get you that rep), but going 10-2 does pretty well to squash those kinds of sentiments. Also it does seem like he genuinely wants to be and stay in Tempe.
He has Wazzu in a bowl this year.
UW has been historically one of the better programs of the Pac 12 -- they fell on some hard times but they're a historically rich franchise. Probably #2 behind USC in reality.
Fraud State isnt an appropriate name. They actually have been wilded successful for a mid-major for over a decade with several different head coaches. I don't think you can call them Elite elite (like top 5 quality) but no doubt they had an incredible run of top 15ish teams for a small school in Idaho. Good football in Idaho!
You have to give their program some respect
Maybe I am biased because I live in Boise, but I don't understand all of the hatred for BSU. They are a team comprised largely of two-star and three-star players (according to rivals they have had two four-star recruits sign with them in the last DECADE), and yet they have largely been able to hold their own when given the chance to play against quality BCS opponents. Nobody is arguing that the Mountain West schedule is like playing in the SEC (or even the B1G), but it is hard to argue that they have not put together some quality teams over the last decade.
It seems that many Michigan fans grudgingly respect Dantonio for "coaching up" his players and overachieving, but hate on BSU for having been very successful with one-tenth of the talent that Dantonio has to work with. I don't get it.
"It seems that many Michigan fans grudgingly respect Dantonio for "coaching up" his players and overachieving, but hate on BSU for having been very successful with one-tenth of the talent that Dantonio has to work with. I don't get it."
Who are these "many" that you are refer to? I think few would be a better adjective.
i wouldn't say many. I wouldn't even knock their strength of schedule that much. Even when they played major schools they always won. Great pick up for Washington, lost their old good coach and upgraded to a better one
I have nothing but respect for Peterson and his program. I watched them beat OK St., Oregon, push Georgia aroung in their own house, and man handle VT. Those are things that for some mysterious reason, Michigan woudn't have done in the last decade.
I don't see how anyone could not respect what they've done.
You realize he's like 9-3 against schools from BCS conferences, right? He beat Oklahoma, Oregon, Georgia, and Virginia Tech, among others. Nobody wanted to play Boise, to the extent that they had to agree to one-off road games just to fill out their nonconference schedule. Dude is legitimately one of the top five coaches in college football.
Petersen didn't build that program up. It was good before he got there. Actually, what's interesting is that none of his Boise predecessors has had much success after leaving for a bigger school.
It was in decent shape when he took over, but Petersen took it to the next level. Dan Hawkins' record at Boise was good, but he never had an undefeated season, he never had a signature win against a school from a BCS conference, and he never played in a BCS bowl (granted, it was harder for non-AQ schools to qualify for BCS bowls back then). Petersen did all three multiple times. He's the one who proved that Boise is capable of playing with the big boys.
At Boise, Hawkins went 12-1, 13-1 and 11-1 in 2002, 2003 and '04 respectively. He didn't go undefeated, but had them on the brink.
The key differentiator is that Chris Petersen regularly beat good teams from AQ conferences. His 9-3 record includes wins over an 11-win Oklahoma team, a 10-win Georgia team, a 10-win Oregon State team, an 11-win Virginia Tech team, and two 10-win Oregon teams. Petersen is the reason no one wanted to play Boise State. Dan Hawkins went 2-8 against AQ teams. And the fact that Petersen was Hawkins' offensive coordinator and Hawkins failed miserably after he and Petersen parted ways probably indicates that Petersen had a lot to do with Boise's success under Hawkins.
Says no to SoCal, claims he doesn't want to leave, ends up in Seattle. Chris Peterson is a hipster.
I have turned down jobs in LA that have offered me double what I make now, absolutely hate LA.
It's possible USC passed on Petersen because he may not be a good fit there. Or vice versa. Petersen supposedly is not great with media and boosters, and a public job like USC may not fit him. There's also this:
It'll be interesting to see what happens with Petersen & #UDub. In interview w #USC his vision didn't mesh with how Pat Haden wants things run
...he proposed an orange field, didn't he?
haden just couldn't get past peterson's view that looking the other way when players are paid is an ncaa infraction.
I don't buy it. Before USC hired Sarkisian, there were reports that Petersen removed his name from consideration for that job. I suspect that the "source" reporting that it was USC who passed on Peterson and not vice-versa is from the USC side. There is no universe in which Sarkisian is a better hire than Petersen.
You might want to consider the success or shocking lack there of of ex Boise St. coaches who moved onto bigger jobs.
There's really only one name on that list worth considering, so that's not a great argument. And Peterson has had Boise running a lot longer than Hawkins did. I think Peterson is a much better coach than Sark and Washington fans should be thanking Pat Haden right now.
Plus Hawkins walked into a crap hole of a problem at Colorado.
Hawkins and Koetter both flamed out. We seen how well Brent Pease did at Florida. Koetter was the one who really got that program going and he didn't exactly light the Pac12 on fire. It most definitely is not a coincidence that Peterson jumped after his wost year at Boise. The expectations are a lot lower at Washington than USC. People who are down on USC hiring Sark are likely the same bunch who thought Pete Carroll was a bad idea. It takes a certain personality to win and recruit at USC.
I'm not saying they're the same, but LA is like the opposite end of the spectrum and that would have to a tough administration to work for. How they didn't give Orgeron the job is baffling.
When you go 10-25 at Ole Miss after taking over for a guy who posted winning records in five of his six years there (David Cutcliffe), that's a pretty big strike against you. Orgeron deserves a shot at another head coaching job, but not a USC-caliber job.
One a related note, it was great to see Cutcliffe put up a 10-win season and win coach of the year, at Duke of all places. He really got a raw deal at Ole Miss. That is one school whose opinion of itself is far removed from reality.
If not wanting to live in LA makes someone a hipster...
Well, I'll put it this way. I lived in LA for several years, and (1) there are hipsters galore in LA, and (2) you could do sooo much worse than hanging out with the hipsters.
Holy smokes LA is hispter central. Drive through Silver Lake or Los Feliz and that's all you'll get.
Yep. Silver Lake has some great music spots (like Spaceland) that are hipstered to the max. Dudes from that scene (e.g., Beck and Eiliot Smith) are/were pretty much hipsters, before that was even a meme. Santa Monica and West Hollywood have become more hipster/foodie since I left.
When someone finally gets him to leave BSU, of all places, it's to go to Washington? I didn't see that one coming...
Seattle is awesome. Beautiful, laid back, with fairly reasonable people. After spending some time there during the football season -- and seeing their fan support & loyalty -- it makes sense. Not to mention their newly updated stadium, which is AMAZING.
U-M's fans are a lot like USC, Miami, Texas, SEC's of the world in that we expect excellence and when we don't get it quickly enough, a lot of us go nuclear.
I can see why he would turn us or USC down but not UW.
I would not compare us to USC or Miami - those places struggle to sell out even when they're good. Texas, maybe. For a historically elite school, I would not say our fanbase is that harsh. The 100,000 streak has survived some rough times.
You're right.
Mostly 2 and 3 star recruits, he is great at player development... I think he will do well. Washington has a loaded roster, new facilities, a revitalized fanbase... Great fit
I'm a little less sure of his success. Dan Hawkins had just as much success and then bombed at Colorado. Granted Peterson was his OC and may have been responsible for the success there.
A Washington fan, id be very happy about this... I think he likes a less-scrutiny job like W over something like USC... He'll get 3 years minimum at Washington
If I was a Huskies fan I would be stoked. Petersen is an upgrade over Sark. Its not too often that you get to upgrade when your coach leaves for greener pastures.
It's never been about how awesome the career move could be. For Petersen, it's about location, location, location. Most people forget that his son is a former cancer patient and the family established a strong bond with the doctors who treated him. Washington is not a very long way from Boise, but most "destination" jobs certainly are (except Oregon).
It's like 400 miles vs. 700 miles. Either way, you're jumping a plane if you're going to Boise and the time difference wouldn't be that great.
There is no way Boise State has better doctors, facilities, or technology than any of the schools he was rumored to be interested in. Compare that to a place like Ann Arbor, Oregon, LA...
It's about the relationship you've established with your doctors. In Petersen's case, I'm sure his wife had more than a little to say about any potential moves that would have taken him too far from Boise.
From first-hand experience, I can also tell you that many juvenile cancer patients become lifetime patients by design (as in the case of C.S. Mott and Children's Hospital of Michigan). That may be the case with Petersen's son, as well. As a result, just "finding a new doctor" isn't such a straight-forward thing, no matter how good they may be in one metro area versus another.
While BSU's facilities may not be as good as those in other, bigger schools, health care in Boise is actually quite good, and some of the facilities are highly regarded.
I guess someone's word is only good for a day and a half...
Anyhow, this is an excellent fit for Peterson. Can still recruit NorCal and can recruit a little more nationally. Also, he is at a hip city with new facilities and a gorgeous campus. He'll do well and I'll wager he'll win a PAC-12 Championship within 3 years.
When exactly did Dissly talk to Peterson? Could be that until Washington came calling this week, Peterson was happy to stay at BSU. I always find it funny when people complain how coaches change schools after telling people they aren't changing schools. I guess circumstances never change, and new opportunities can never change your mind.
Not complaining, just saying that what he said only lasted a day and a half. If I were in Petersen's shoes I would leave too. In the world of sports and in professional life you have to make business based decisions and that's what Petersen did. Washington will always be a better opportunity than Boise.
It sucks for the kids that commit to a coach and then they're gone in a snap. Empathy for the kids is what I'm trying to convey when I say that his word only lasts a short time. I'm sure the kid will be fine, though.
Rains
Well, in any case, Boise State fans were quite prepared with this - HERE - "The Complete List Of Ways To React To Chris Petersen Job Rumors".
Here's a snippet from ESPN's constantly updated story:
"Petersen, who met with Washington on Thursday, felt ready to leave because the timing was right for professional and family reasons and because he felt Washington was the right fit, according to a source."
It will be interesting to see what the contract looks like - Whittingham at Utah makes about $2.5 million, I believe, and I have to wonder if Washington puts him near or right at this level at least. It would be interesting to know what Sarkisian will get at USC and what David Shaw makes as well for possible comparisons / guesses.
Too mean?
too soon? not soon enough!
Is it any wonder that the PAC 10 is pushing the SEC for conference reputation these days? Look at the coaches they hire when there are openings and compare that to the B1G. We seem to go to the hottest MAC coach available instead of opening our B1G network funded checkbooks and hiring the Chris Peterson's of the coaching world.
With the exception of Ohio State and maybe PSU the B1G generally goes "on the cheap" when it comes to replacing coaches and it shows.
were all MAC coaches.
yes, but they weren't mac coaches just before they were hired at the schools he lists.
has a tradition of producing outstanding coaches. His post was ignorant.
By the way, Bo was hired straight from Miami as was Woody.
I know we tend to want to live in the past here, but Woody and Bo are not relevant to this discussion.
Woody coached in the MAC 60 years ago. Bo coached in the MAC 45 years ago. You act like dropping those two names adds any meaningfulness to your point. It doesn't. In fact, it shows how weak your argument is that you have to refence coaches who haven't coached football in over 20 years as prime examples of great MAC coaches.
Things change.
I think his point was that it is possible to hire a great coach from the MAC who can come to your program and do great things for a long time.
He might have mentioned Bo and Woody since this is a Michigan blog and it was a common point of reference.
There hasn't been a good coach hired directly out of the MAC in over a decade.
Yeah, by your argument Ohio should never have hired Tressel. After all, he wasn't even a MAC coach.
And Meyer and Saban weren't poached from the MAC. Saban coached Toledo for a year. Meyer at BGSU for 2 years. The MAC hasn't produced a top-notch coach in over a decade, which is one of the reasons why the Big Ten is struggling.
Yeah cuz the SEC and PAC 12 always hire the best coaches. Kiffin, graham, leach, Bielema, jones, John L, Muschamp, Freeze, etc.
You need program builders to build to national prominence. Save the sexy hires for big time programs of which there are exactly 4 and no more in the big 10
E
What are you talking about? Pretty much every coach hired into the league is a former coordinator/assistant. UW and Colorado hired coaches from weaker conferences(though petersen is a much bigger name that any MAC coach). Arizona and WSU took chances on disgraced offensive gurus and ASU hired Graham. UCLA snagged a twice fired former NFL HC.
As opposed to Washington, who just hired a guy from the MWC.
Someone hire Gruden already!
He runs the spread.
I bet if we hired someone from the Big East it would go well.
This makes Kalen Ballage to MSU likely. Ugh.
That was my thinking too. Clearly the universe is conspiring to inflict as much pain as possible upon Michigan this year, while favoring rivals with unearned benefits.
Then again, maybe Ballage takes a look a UW now.
washington has coach poached, gets better coach.
Petersen picked up where Hawkins left off, then Hawkins promptly fell on his face at Colorado. Of course Petersen was the OC for all of Hawkins' success, so maybe that is an endorsement for Petersen
Whoa. Did not see that one coming.
Wonder if he'll try to poach any of Hoke's westcoast-native staff, specifically Funk.
Hear me out, the places that came calling, for the most part, were programs with extremely high expectations that often required rebuilding (not necessarily USC, but still) where at the first signs of everything not coming up Milhouse you get canned.
At Washington he has a decent base left from the previous staff, but still has time to build his program the way he wants and isn't required to get 9-10 wins every year. It's a step up where the program has pretty damn good potential, he knows how to recruit to that area in general, but is also quite safe. So it kind of gives him the best of all worlds.
Good hire. Similar recruiting region. Bigger school with good football history. He seems to get a lot out of his players. He managed to keep Titus Young grounded--perhaps his best accomplishment.
Watch out, Pac 12. That north division is wide open with Oregon and Stanford having peaked.
Also, its incredible how the power has shifted in the conference over just a few short years. Next year, the South is looking like the stronger division with ASU, UCLA, USC, and even Arizona.
In the North, Stanford loses a ton of starters. Oregon will be good again, but after them there is not much depth. Assuming Stanford takes a step back, who is the second best team in the North? Maybe Washington? WSU? OSU? Lots of meh there.
I'm also betting that Oregon and Stanford start to slow down a bit. Chip Kelly and Jim Harbaugh were the architects of those respective programs. They usually take a bit of a dive after those types of guys leave. I also don't see a lot of HC in Helfrich. Seems more like a coordinator than a leader of men. We'll see.
I compare Pedersen's career progression to John Belein's. Steady progression combined with a reasonable sense of loyalty. If Pedersen is successful at UW he still has a chance to go to a truly elite job some day but can still live and work within reasonably boundaries on his own terms. Commend him on his choice if it involves a combination of meeting career and family needs.
So..Petersen has coached at every level of his sport over the last 40 years, working his way up through the ranks? Not understanding that comparison. I think that's a put-down to the career resume of Coach B.
Remember when Dirk Koetter was all the rage after his stint at Boise? And Dan Hawkins? And Brent Pease was supposed to take all that Boise magic with him to Florida?
I'm going to let this one play out before I call it a home run hire.
I wrote out a long response similar to this and then when I went to submit, it magically disappeared into the intertubes.
The other thing to consider is that Boise had a pretty down year (for them) and perhaps Petersen saw this as a sign of things to come and that his heyday was starting to wind down.
BSU did have a pretty young team this year, and they lost their starting QB and backup RB to injuries about halfway through the season. It will be interesting to see what they are able to do next year.
Really? After all of the A-list jobs he has been offered over the last few years, he finally settles for Washington?
I thought that too but I also realize now that the bottom has really fallen out in Boise.
Hopefully this means no more Blue Turf on my teevee. Hurts my eyes. My perfectly manicured lawn is green not blue.
...good move for both sides.
I guess now we just have Jon Gruden as the coach rumor board now. To be honest though i thought he was never leave Boise but it seems like a good fit for Washington its not a win now school and they will let him do build it his way doesnt have to feel like he was going to be micromanage. Now I wonder if Sark will try to poach Nussmeier from Bama to USC.
I think Peterson will win now at UW. He doesn't have to change offensive philosopihes as they are already pro style, Sark has recruited very well there and they looked poised to break out in the next year or two. I think Peterson recognized this as a awesome opportunity and jumped on it. All the other PAC jobs were messes he would have to step into. This one is set up already.
I was in Chicago the weekend that Washington played Illinois at Soldier Field. I was amazed at how the Washington faithful turned out. There were more of them running around than Illini "fans". Must be a great job on the west coast.
Peterson recruits that area and seems to be well respected there. Good fit for him and the school.
I actually think Washington is getting an upgrade.
#narduzzitoboise
Every single team has a good coach now. Or, at least, has a coach considered to be a good up and comer. If the Big Ten is going to compete they need to start having their middling teams hire good coaches, hopefully it started with Minnesota and Kill. (It also needs Michigan to have a top staff, but that's for a different post).
I also don't get the shock over him leaving for Washington. Washington has great facilities, one of the loudest stadiums in the country, has tradition (second most PAC 12 Rose Bowls after USC), and good recruiting. It's also in a pretty cool city. It's not like he went to Oregon State or Wazzu.
Color me shocked. I live in Seattle right now and can't wait to get out. The main reasons for me are the weather, the traffic and the depressed people. Other than that it's a cool city.
"other than that"?
I don't understand the people saying You-Dub is a bad move...it's a good school w/ better facilities than most, an historically successful program with a MNC within the last 25 years, and it's located in a beautiful city. If a guy can recruit reasonably well and coach AT ALL (and Petersen can seemingly do both) there's no reason he shouldn't do well there.
of the "bad move" folks are too young to remember when Washington was consistently good when Don James was the coach.
From the late 70's to early 90's Washington was USC's equal on the left coast. Those teams in 90,91 and 92 were something else.
Dd
2014 at Hawaii, then home to Eastern Washington, Illinois, Georgia State.
He'll be all the rage with a 4-0 start, then it gets serious.
I think that Washington being a decent program without necessarily being a top tier one actually helped it land Peterson ... There are people who would rather start off-broadway than getting pushed into the bright lights of broadway right away.
Narduzzi to Boise.
Calling it now
Now Colin Cowherd has his doppelgänger coaching his favorite team...besides USC.
I guess I have two big questions here: Where does Boise go from here? And after all the jobs that have courted/been rumored to have courted Petersen, why this one, and why now?
I mean, I like it. Washington is a great program that could probably be quite easily resurrected into a power in a conference verging on being the SEC West. The ceiling was probably hit at BSU like four years ago, and you can only recruit on the SmurfTurf Effect for so long before you want something more. But what made Petersen pick this moment?
Boise State's current performance (8-4 and unranked this year) might have something to do with it ... But I also believe it might have been timing related to family events (kids moving away etc.) or the fact that his age (around 50) is perfect to cash in on his success thus far and at least get one big contract under his belt
People who are downplaying Petersen's success at Boise because they play in a weak conference or comparing him to Dan Hawkins are not accounting for how Boise performed against BCS schools. Here's a list of who Boise beat under Petersen: Washington, Georgia, Arizona State, Virginia Tech, Oregon State (twice), Oregon (twice), and Oklahoma (who can forget that one). Dan Hawkins' resume at Boise was not nearly as impressive.
Dude is legitimately one of the best coaches in the game. If I was a Washington fan, I would be having a party right now.
I know I was hoping he'd've gotten the Michigan gig when RichRod was fired. I don't think we as fans would have regretted such a hire.
About 1 or 2 a year then.
A very good situation for Peterson to walk into. Sark has recruited very well, and UW is in better shape now than at any time in the last 10 years. I think he would have left earlier, had his predecessor at Boise, Hawkins, not flamed out at Colorado.
It always seemed like CP would either wait it out for a big, big job or stay at Boise. Washington seems like he's settling. They used to be good?
It's in the pacific NW and in the great city of Seattle. Don't underestimate UW
Don't know if the guy is worth 3.6 million a year though. Makes him the highest paid coach in the PAC-12.