UW Football
Gilbertson will step down after Apple Cup

By Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter

HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES Washington athletic director Todd Turner and coach Keith Gilbertson announce that Gilbertson will leave his job at the end of the 2004 season. Gilbertson is 7-13 as Huskies coach.

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On Todd Turner's first day as Washington's athletic director in early August, he met with football coach Keith Gilbertson, who had one simple request: He wanted a commitment he would be the coach beyond this season to give some stability to the football program.

Turner said he couldn't do it, that he wanted time to review the program instead.

"It was an unfair question to ask me on my first day," Turner said. "It was expected, but unfair from my perspective. I just couldn't answer it."

And from that moment on, the events of yesterday — when Gilbertson agreed to resign as football coach immediately after being told he wouldn't be the coach next season — seemed inevitable.

Matters came to a head after UW's 31-6 loss at Oregon on Saturday, which dropped Washington's record to 1-7, its worst since 1973.

As the team plane landed in Seattle, Turner told Gilbertson to meet with him on Sunday. In several meetings during the day on the UW campus — when Gilbertson again said he needed a three-to-five-year commitment if he were going to stay on as coach — Turner told Gilbertson instead that he would not be the coach next season.

"Ultimately, I had to validate where I thought the program was," Turner said.

Turner said he was willing to wait to make the announcement after the season. But Gilbertson said that if the decision was made, it should be announced now so as to end the speculation.

"Now there's no more doubt about my future," Gilbertson said.

Said Turner: "It was clear that he wanted the burden of all of this lifted, so let's decide what we are going to do and let's go forward."

Gilbertson and his staff will coach the Huskies in their final three games, concluding with the Apple Cup at Washington State on Nov. 20. A replacement could be named any time after that — it's unlikely anything would happen before then as Turner said he would not talk to current college coaches until the regular season is over.

Turner did not set a timetable for hiring a replacement and said he would not comment on possible candidates. But given the history of UW president Mark Emmert — who made Nick Saban the highest-paid coach in college football when he hired him at LSU in 1999 — the Huskies are expected to try to lure a big name and make a splash.

"We have incredibly high aspirations for (the football program's) future," Turner said.

Gilbertson's contract will be honored, which apparently means he will receive a buyout of roughly $735,000. Assistant coach contracts — all of which end in May — will be honored as well, and some could be retained, though that will depend on the wishes of the new coach.

Gilbertson is 7-13 in a UW coaching career that began about as awkwardly as possible.

	HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES Keith Gilbertson leaves a news conference announcing that he will resign his position at the end of the season. The Huskies are 1-7.

He served as an assistant coach at UW twice under Don James — including the 1991 national-title season as offensive coordinator — and again during Rick Neuheisel's tenure from 1999-2002. When Neuheisel was fired in July 2003 for taking part in a college basketball pool and initially lying about it to NCAA investigators, Gilbertson, who had also been a head coach at California and Idaho, was an obvious choice to take over.

Gilbertson, 56, was hired eight days before practice was to begin for the 2003 season but was given what essentially amounted to a two-year guaranteed contract, with the final two years not guaranteed.

"It became apparent to me probably as early as the first day I took this job that when we didn't get a long-term commitment, I was basically going to be the interim coach, and I've felt like that, particularly this year in light of how the season's gone," Gilbertson said.

Considering the upheaval at the time, Turner said yesterday, "The chances for success were very small."

Gilbertson, in fact, said earlier this year that he might not have taken the job had he known how difficult the 2003 season would be.

The season was played under a cloud of NCAA investigations and other off-field distractions. A team generally picked to contend for the Pac-10 title instead finished 6-6 and didn't receive a bowl-game invitation for the first time, when not on probation, since 1988.

Gilbertson had hoped this year would be different, though he knew success would be a struggle as the team needed to break in a new quarterback to replace Cody Pickett, the leading passer in school history. But none of the team's three quarterbacks could solidify the job, and the Huskies were also hit with an inordinate number of injuries — 12 players have had surgeries since the start of camp.

"Circumstances were out of his control in a lot of respects," Turner said.

As the losses mounted, so did the number of empty seats at Husky Stadium and the lack of TV games. Both hurt UW's budget, which was already operating at a bare-bones level — it was cut 2 percent across the board last spring

Recruiting was also proving to be a struggle. UW has verbal commitments for next year from just four players, none of whom are regarded as real elite prospects. Many of the top recruits in the state, such as running back Jonathan Stewart of Timberline High, were no longer considering UW.

One source said that UW coaches had recently been forced to expand their recruiting wish list after finding decreasing interest from many of the "A-list" recruits they were seeking,

It all added up, Turner said, to a program that needed "an immediate boost," which it could only get through a coaching change. Turner said there had been no pressure from boosters to get rid of Gilbertson.

Turner said that Gilbertson "has agreed to assist me" after the end of the season in helping the program get back on track. What that means, exactly, was left unclear as Gilbertson indicated he will seek coaching jobs elsewhere. Gilbertson also will have hip replacement surgery after the season and will likely take several months to recover.

What he won't do, apparently, is feel bitterness toward Washington, saying he understood the decision.

"I'm a bottom-line guy," he said. "And the bottom line is that with wins and losses it isn't happening, for whatever reason."

Gilbertson had often talked of how he dreamed of one day being UW's head coach while growing up in Snohomish. But yesterday, as he reviewed his 15-month UW head-coaching tenure, he refuted the notion that he had at least gotten to live out that dream.

"It would have been anybody's dream whose dad was a high-school coach in the state to coach at the University of Washington — if you were a guy they went out and sought to hire, that you had a long-term commitment and you had an understanding of what was going to happen for you when you were there," he said.

"The way I got this job was not a dream job. That was hard on a lot of folks. I would not call this a dream-job situation.

"I do love this place and I have a great passion for Husky football and I feel like I've made a contribution here. I'm sorry this year has not been a good one, but that was not a dream situation for anybody."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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