Writer and Husky fan Derek Johnson, author of two previous books on Washington football history, led himself back into the torture chamber that was the tenure of former head coach Tyrone Willingham for his latest book, Bow Down to Willingham.
Folks, things were worse than we thought. Willingham has lost his team through arrogance and poor communication well before the 0-12 debacle. “Willingham didn’t have anyone’s respect,” former Husky and current San Diego Charger C.J. Wallace told Johnson. “It was always us versus him.” Even Willingham’s admirers grade him low as a coach. “He gave us a lot of stuff to make us better as men,” says former Husky Caesar Rayford. “He just forgot to focus on football.”
Johnson’s convinced me that Willingham was a disaster of a coach. But the author makes a second, more controversial claim, one best encapsulated in Johnson’s subhead, which is: “How White Guilt Enabled a Secretly Malicious Coach to Destroy Husky Football.” If Willingham were white, Johnson contends, he would’ve been fired sooner. Later in his book, Johnson links Willingham’s tenure to the election of Barack Obama, writing that “white liberals worshipped at the altars of Willingham and Obama.” Since I was both a Willingham supporter and an Obama supporter, and am undeniably a white liberal, I figured Johnson and I should have a chat.
What’s the strongest specific evidence you have that Willingham’s tenure lasted longer than it ought to have because he was black?
By the end of the 2007 season, Willingham was a disastrous 11-25 through three seasons at UW. Unseen to the public, team morale inside the program was a travesty. Players were petrified to speak out for fear of Willingham’s retribution.
At the end of 2007, Willingham had a private meeting with President Emmert and Todd Turner in Hawaii, where the Huskies were to play (and lose) to the Warriors. President Emmert privately told multiple people that he entered that meeting with the intention of firing Willingham. Something happened in that room to change his mind. Sources told me that there were concerns of Washington suffering a public backlash like the one Notre Dame endured when they fired Willingham in 2004.
Who are your sources?
Those names are off the record, but generally speaking they were in close proximity of former President Emmert and knew of his concerns of a racial backlash.
In your epilogue, you compare Willingham to President Obama, arguing that both are “arguably incompetent” and have “attained powerful roles they had no business assuming” because “white guilt…provided a catalyst to their careers.” But many whites have attained similar roles with less experience: Steve Sarkisian and George W. Bush come to mind. How can you be sure “white guilt” propelled Willingham and Obama?
For his many faults, George W. Bush had real world business experience running and managing businesses. He was not a career politician (though if Bush ran his businesses like he did the country, they would have all gone bankrupt). As for Sarkisian, his resume was light at a time when Husky Football was on life support. When it happened, I was deeply disappointed by the fact Washington hired him.
I understand and appreciate why you posed that question, but those circumstances are apples and oranges when compared to the Obama and Willingham situations. The crux of Obama’s presidential campaign was the chance for America to make history by hiring a black man as its leader and change the world for good. This was hyped extensively. But the media never properly vetted him to let us know who he really was and what he really stood for. We’ve come to see him as he really is, and many Americans feel tremendously let down. Obama’s popularity rate has plummeted from about 90 percent to 38 percent. He was never what most people thought he was.
As for Willingham, he went directly from running backs coach with the Minnesota Vikings to a head coaching job at Stanford. Where else in modern times has a coach ever gone from running backs coach to head coach? Willingham had been groomed by the legendary Bill Walsh from his Minority Coaching Fellowship program. It was an admirable intention, but the reality is that Willingham was promoted way too fast through the ranks because he looked the part. But looking the part isn’t the same as being a good coach who knows the game well enough to teach it effectively.
Quick food for thought: If Sarkisian went 11-25 in his first three years, mistreated players and bungled virtually every aspect of his job, he would be fired with haste. There would be no public outcry and vigorous public debate about giving him a fourth year.
Former kicker Michael Braunstein told you: “Willingham would be a great coach at Air Force, Navy, Army…(where) guys are soldiers and will do everything they’re told.” Do you agree?
No, I don’t for the most part. If he was in a situation with fantastic coordinators running things for him, and he could serve as the titular leader, he could evade disaster like he did at Stanford. (To be fair, Willingham led Stanford to their first Rose Bowl since 1971–Seth.) The key is would the assistant coaches work hard at recruiting even with Willingham spending minimum effort at doing so? It’s rare to find great organizations or businesses that don’t have the tone set by a hard-working leader. The leader sets the tone for everybody else.
If white guilt is so powerful, how can you ever be sure that a black coaching candidate wasn’t “propped up” the way you say Willingham was?
Each situation is unique, so it’s not like there is some scientific formula to utilize. If we’re speaking generally, without inside information, then we only have our common sense to guide us. When I heard a few months ago that New Mexico’s black head coach Mike Locksley was one of five candidates for the Maryland job, I winced. In his two seasons at NM, Locksley had gone 2-22. Really? You’re going to consider a guy who has gone 1-11 in each of his two seasons as a head coach? It’s almost insulting to the black population to bend in contortions like that. If you want to provide blacks with more coaching opportunities, go find a hard-working assistant or an up-and-coming guy toiling in Division II somewhere, and give him a chance.
Many observers of the Husky football program (including me) argued that Willingham shouldn’t have been fired after the 2007 season because the Huskies had faced a killer schedule, and because another disruption to the program could be devastating. Do you think those arguments were motivated by white guilt as well?
No, I don’t believe that white guilt was the only factor that led to people supporting Willingham. The line of reasoning you cite was understandable but short-sighted, even for people that didn’t know the inside stories. The program was being devastated from the inside and people who saw what was happening could have said something but didn’t. If you, Seth Kolloen, and thousands of other Willingham supporters had heard the player testimonials in my book after the 2007 season, I’m guessing you would rethink your position. (He’s right about that–Seth) There were people, most notably former athletic director Todd Turner, who witnessed what was being done to the players, and yet seemingly deluded themselves into believing everything was being done for the greater cause of maintaining the number of black coaches in college football. On the surface it was a worthy cause, but Turner sacrificed the careers of those players and the welfare of the team in the process.
In December 2007, I privately had a heated but respectful debate with a famous former Husky player. He told me that Willingham needed more time to turn the program around and that I was being too impatient. Two months ago, I spoke with him again, and told him some of the stories that were going to be in the book. He was stunned, and said that he wished he knew that information back then so he might have been able to speak up on behalf of the players.
Thanks, Derek. You can buy Bow Down to Willingham and Johnson’s other (less political) Husky history books at DerekJohnsonBooks.com.
