Tyrone Willingham appealed to parents more than the recruits

In the end, it was about the players. It usually is.

Or in Washington's case, the lack of them recruited on Tyrone Willingham's watch.

Here's the question that will forever be debated about Willingham, out as UW coach after the season: Why did it work for him at Stanford when it didn't at Notre Dame or Washington?

How did he get to a Rose Bowl with the Cardinal in 1999 and recruit NFL-bound players like Troy Walters, Willie Howard, Tank Williams and Kwame Harris? With less-stringent admission standards at Notre Dame and Washington, where was the commensurate talent haul at those two schools?

Part of it, no doubt, was the nature of the Pac-10 then. Stanford caught the Pac-10 at a time before USC had Pete Carroll, and the league was relatively down.

My theory on why Willingham later struggled as a recruiter: He appealed to parents more than he did their kids.

When a coach sits down in a prospect's living room, he's usually dialing into two channels. Parents want to know about the business school, the academic-support system and things like whether athletes will live in the dorms for two years.

Kids want to know how soon they might start.

Ever button-down, meticulous and proper, Willingham struck parents as a good choice. But my guess with recruits is, most of them have to see the boyish, good-times side of a coach. Somehow, they need to envision him as a guy who, 25 years ago, could have pulled off a senior prank in high school as they might.

You could relate to Pete Carroll that way. I'm thinking recruits related to Willingham as they would the headmaster of a prep school, liable to rap their knuckles with a ruler.

A couple of days after Willingham got the job at Washington, I talked to some parents of prospects Willingham had recruited hard for Notre Dame, but who had gone elsewhere. They spoke of him in superlative terms.

"He was magnificent," said Elsie Moore-Smith, an Arizona State professor whose son, Allen Smith, ended up at Stanford. "He's just a compelling character, very imposing even though he's not a large person. You have a feeling he's a special human being."

At Stanford, that parent-son recruiting dynamic is likely a little different. Given the requisite of good grades, there's probably more family-wide recognition of the value of education and what might come after football.

Meanwhile, there are the cold realities of recruiting to Stanford. There's a limited pool of talent out there, but inside that pool, there's usually inherent interest. So recruiting as most of us know it — pitching snake oil, to whatever degree — is less of a factor.

You'd have thought Willingham might have been able to make it work at Notre Dame, with its combination of athletic and academic emphasis. But after starting 8-0 there in 2002 — when Sports Illustrated headlined on its cover, "What a Difference a Coach Makes" — he has gone 24-47.

In the big picture, today's college coach has to be a collegial figure. He has to recruit, he has to be able to mix with boosters, and in some measure, he has to offer insight to the media. That doesn't mean he has to compromise his standards. But Willingham didn't do any of those things very well.

There are people who will tell you Willingham didn't work hard enough at recruiting. I can't confirm that.

He just wasn't very good at it.

Pac-10 notes

• With a loss Saturday at Oregon State, Arizona State reaches two dubious milestones. Its sixth straight defeat would tie the school record of 1929, and it would be the longest losing streak of coach Dennis Erickson's college career.

• Remarkably, Arizona has committed a single penalty over its past two games. That one was a killer, a dead-ball personal foul that moved the ball from the USC 1 to the 16 and prevented a likely touchdown and 7-3 lead for Arizona.

• No freshman has led the Pac-10 in rushing, but Jacquizz Rodgers of Oregon State is No. 1 at 116 yards a game, nine ahead of California's Jahvid Best.

• One of the most daunting, all-you-need-to-know streaks is that USC has won 23 straight in November under coach Pete Carroll. Saturday, it's November again.

• Among all the unlikely developments involving QBs in this league is Jeremiah Masoli of Oregon prospering so early for the Ducks, considering that of their five candidates, he was the last one to arrive on campus in the fall. Referring to the turbulence there, coach Mike Bellotti observes, "I think you can say he's the man."

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com