USC's Steve Sarkisian would do best to remind us of another UW football hire — Don James

On the madcap Thursday that defined the Washington football-coaching search — Pat Hill going, Mike Leach going, Steve Sarkisian coming — a well-placed mover and shaker on the college scene had a recommendation for the Huskies.

Do what Joe Kearney did.

Who's Joe Kearney? Well, longtime followers of UW will recall Kearney as the athletic director who, after the 1974 season, introduced Don James as the next football coach. James would go on to become Don the Deity in Seattle, winning a national championship in 1991.

Kearney left here shortly after and went to Michigan State. He was looking for a basketball coach, and he unveiled Jud Heathcote of Montana, who in East Lansing, Mich., elicited a lot of the same quizzical looks as had James at Washington a few years earlier. Heathcote, of course, also won a national championship.

So all Scott Woodward, the new UW athletic director, had to do was go out and find a coach to win a national championship. Or, to put things in proper order: How about winning a game?

But the man's point was clear: With big names dropping like skeet, Woodward needed to be able to fetch somebody worthy who wasn't on the A list.

Is Steve Sarkisian that guy? Today, we don't have a clue. In fact, Sarkisian and the Huskies haven't even copped publicly yet to the notion that he's the head coach.

Have to admit, Sarkisian's age, 34, is a bit arresting. It hit home with the realization that he was the quarterback in 1996 when the Corey Dillon Huskies beat Brigham Young here. So Sarkisian was in college when Jim Lambright was on the back nine of his six-year tenure at Washington.

He's young.

The real question in the Purple Nation: Is he capable? Is he dynamic?

And ultimately: Is he a fit?

There's no doubt that Woodward and UW president Mark Emmert have walked out on a long limb with this one. Amid a lot of speculation that they were going to turn heads with the hire, they've instead named an outside assistant to the job for the first time since Jim Owens in 1957.

Or, as one sardonic poster put it on Dawgman.com, mindful of controversial ex-AD Barbara Hedges' USC roots: "Stealing the Trojans blind! First Babs, now Sark."

Woodward apparently was taken by Sarkisian during their Thanksgiving Day interview. No surprise there; offensive coordinators are almost unfailingly the most congenial coaches on a football team. They have to be. They're constantly massaging the often fragile psyches of quarterbacks.

Of course, this is all about translation. Does Sarkisian's enthusiasm, offensive know-how and recruiting acumen in Southern California translate to being head coach at a program that has lost its way?

And within that lies the real issue. Is Sarkisian going to understand Washington, and is he going to understand that Washington is not USC?

Back about the time Kearney was quietly making his hires, Oregon State did what the Huskies are about to do. It went south and picked the most promising assistant off USC, the reigning program in the conference — Craig Fertig.

Fertig cracked jokes much in the manner of his mentor, John McKay, he ran the I-formation at a school where that wouldn't work, and he seemed to minimize the rivalry with Oregon. And he failed badly at Oregon State.

That's ancient history, but the message isn't. Sarkisian needs to be adaptable, and he needs to find a way to meld today's offense with the historic toughness at Washington.

Rick Neuheisel, a smart man, seemed to have a grasp of the football fabric around Washington, likening the thirst for the game to that in the Midwest. But then he gravitated toward a finesse style. And even if you removed all the ancillary things that got him in trouble here, the heavy lean toward a passing style was ominous.

If I'm Sarkisian, then, one of the first things I do is spend some time with people like Lambright and Rick Redman, the iconic All-American of the 1960s.

Sarkisian could do worse than this goal — being the kind of coach Joe Kearney would have hired.

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