Let's hope for a very Happy Husky New Year.

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Update [2007-12-29 19:28:46 by andrewjh]::

According to Brian Dohn of the LA Daily News, Neuheisel has called Dewayne Walker his "No. 1 recruit" and hopes to keep him on as defensive coordinator. UW is definitely makes a push for Walker, so we'll see how this plays out.

I've mentioned before how this could impact UW as far as our defensive coordinator search and perhaps even rounding out the recruiting class. As Bob Condotta reported earlier this week, Dewayne Walker has been reportedly offered a two year deal by UW to be the new defensive coordinator. However, there have also been reports that he may stay at UCLA as DC. But, I have to say the telling piece of news is this: Walker met with Willingham the same day he has his second interview with UCLA. To me, that signals Walker was looking for a back up plan should things fall through at UCLA. It seems that has happened now. I'll update any news on this as it comes in.

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Assuming there won't be much Husky news the next few days, I'll be taking a break from the blog to enjoy being home for Christmas with my family. UDubDish wishes a Happy Holidays to everyone. Here's to wishing the best for our Huskies in 2008.

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Slick Rick may be making a comeback to the Pac-10.

According to the LA Daily News Neuheisel interviewed for the head coach opening at UCLA last Friday. For those that haven't been keeping up with the former Husky coach, he is currently the offensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens. Although, as the report states, Brian Billick has told Neuheisel that he can leave before the end of the NFL season for a college coaching job.

A lot of the national reports I've seen on this refer to Neuheisel's success at Colorado and Washington as past qualifications for this position. Neuheisel is a UCLA alum and also was a graduate assistant coach during his time in law school at USC on a NCAA postgraduate scholarship. So, he clearly has roots there and would give the "big name" appeal to a hire for UCLA. However, to our fellow Bruins fans, we'll have you know that "Newweasel" is trouble. Our program is still crawling out of the crater that his firing created. He has had NCAA violations at both programs he's run, and you'd probably just be better off staying away from the guy. On the other hand, it could make for a great opportunity to finally stick to old Rick on the field.

Other candidates for the UCLA job are Norm Chow (Tennessee Titans OC), John Harbaugh (Philadelphia Eagles Assistant), and DeWayne Walker (currently UCLA interim coach). This hire could also have reprcussions for how recruting ends up shaping out as UW has their eyes on a couple players who have made it known they are waiting to see who is hired and could possibly reconsider their choice of UCLA.

Update [2007-12-18 11:35:52 by andrewjh]:
According to the latest reports on the UCLA coaching job, Neuheisel is expected to get a second interview. But, as some have speculated, UW is expected to make an "intense push" to hire DeWayne Walker as the Defensive Coordinator to replace Baer. As I said yesterday, this could impact recruiting as some might want to follow Walker to UW.

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"It just was enlightening about where our society, culture and support group has gone in their expectations of what constitutes a quality program on a campus of higher education." - Todd Turner

Yesterday I scoffed at that comment a little bit at first reaction. Turner started talking about larger entities like society and culture in general. I have to say that I was looking at this pretty narrowly. This morning I read that quote again and it hit me. This is really the core reason why Todd Turner decided to resign from the program. For Turner, wins were not the number one priority of the program. Turner is more worried about developing quality individuals and building a culture of success. Sure, winning is part of that, but it wasn't the only objective.

Obviously, this leads us very quickly to a philosophical debate. What should the purpose of collegiate athletics be? Is it purely to win in sport? Are there larger objectives that athletics such as developing quality individuals?

In fact, these are questions that Turner himself struggled with:
"And I have to look at that after 32 years of doing this and say, 'Wow, is that really what we are all about? Have I been that naive all this period of time? I have been spending all my time on the student-athlete experience and trying to create better lives for people and the proper place in higher education when all I should have been worrying about is how many games we've won.'"

I'm sure some of you are banging your head against the wall by this point, but those are questions worth thinking about. It's the old "win games at all costs" versus "it matters how you win" debate.

I'm not one to discount values and the importance of sport in instilling those values. However, as a fan dedicated to a team, you care about the bottom line: winning games. I'd even go a step further to claim that from that point it is where all those other things like building quality individuals can take place. If you're a losing program, chances are you aren't going to be able to care about that as much nor will you attract the type of talent that will make your program competitive to begin with.

Yeah, there is more to all of this, but I really do think that you cannot discount the importance of winning. You play the game to win. You want to win the right way with dignity, but nevertheless the point is winning. Todd Turner is a nice guy. Maybe he was the right guy when he first came here. I'm not really sure. But I do know that it is clear his focus was not as much on winning as it should have been.

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I am sure many of you out there are pleased to know that this afternoon Athletic Director Todd Turner submitted his resignation. We sure know that those over at FireToddTurner.com are very pleased.  Effective the end of January, Turner will step down from his post of AD.  Personally, I am not going to make too much of this at the moment.  President Emmert claims that "there wasn't any one thing" leading to the resignation and that it was more that Turner was no longer the "right fit" or the Huskies program.

So how much should we read into this?  Does this mean that last week's decision to keep Coach Willingham no longer stands?  And what does this mean for the long term picture of Husky athletics?

I'd say that right now it is just too early to read into any potential answers for those questions.  Obviously, this shakes things up considerably.  Willingham was Turner's guy and a new AD may want to remake the program with his new vision.  It really is too early to tell what will happen.

However, Bob Condotta has done some speculating on his blog about how this impacts Husky football:

And what's all this about "our society, culture, and support group"? What an odd thing to say. I've never been much of a fan of Turner's and his comments at times have really raised eyebrows and even been upsetting at times, so how fitting for him to go out with something like that.

The search for a new AD begins. Who will be Turner's replacement and lead the program in a new direction? We'll know soon enough.

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This past week I was locked out of the blog.  For some reason it took SB Nation's admin a good part of the week to get my account back up online, so my apologies for the lack of posting.  A lot has happened in the past week with the biggest story being Willingham getting backing from Emmert and Turner to be the football coach next year.  More on this story and others today.  I have some posts prepared that I was not able to get up this past week, but now that we are back online I'll be getting that stuff up this afternoon.

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Occasionally, I check the blog's hits and where my hits are coming from. It helps me tailor my content to what is getting attention and gives me some feedback.

The past week, I've noticed that this post about Christal Morrison has been getting some hits. It's an old story from when Zach ran the blog in the "Fun with Facebook" section. But apparently people have been searching about Morrison and her good looks. It just so happens that the PI's Ted Miller wrote a column yesterday about this very topic.

So, today I was quite surprised to come home and see that UDubDish has had over 1300 hits today. Apparently the blog Seattlest.com linked to the story. It's a funny post about Miller's "huge boner" for Morrison and definitely worth checking out for an amusing read. Then to get our site even more attention today, Sports Illustrated's Campus Links has linked to my post the other day on advocating the firing Willingham.

So why do I mention all of this? Well, first it is nice to have the site recognized. My goal is to expand this blog and make it as successful as many of the other SB Nation blogs and build a community of Husky fans here. I've been working hard lately to get near daily commentary up, so it is nice to have my writing read.

And, also, if any of you new visitors check out the site a little bit and are reading this I'd like to say welcome to U-Dub Dish. Hopefully you'll check back some time to follow our Huskies and feel free to join in with your own comments by making a diary or commenting on posts.

Update [2007-11-30 13:23:59 by andrewjh]: We had over 1700 hits yesterday. A record, by far, since I've been writing here for UDubDish.

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I was in New York for the weekend and unable to access the Internet.  So, I want to apologize for not getting the game thread up or any recent updates.

Obviously, a lot has happened from Jake Locker's injury to Husky basketball getting underway tonight.  I have a fair amount of content that I've been working on and I'll start getting some of that up in the coming days.  

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Apparently, J.R. Hasty has quit the UW football team. Pretty straight forward why this happened: lack of playing time. Hasty said, "I haven't had my fair share of repetitions" this afternoon when asked why he was transferring. After Hasty was declared academically ineligible last season and apparently showed a lack of motivation he was on Tyrone Willingham's bad side. I don't think he ever had a fair chance from Tyrone after that.

In my opinion, this is a huge loss for the Huskies. Hasty was sophomore and could have been a big part of the Husky running attack in the coming seasons. Instead, he'll be transferring. This is a definite mistake by Willingham and it really makes me wonder if guys are truly buying into Ty's vision for the program.

Bob Condotta with the news on his blog here.

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Sorry for being a little slow with the posting this week.  It was my intention to break down the offense earlier in the week, but I'm obviously a little behind.  

Anyway, here is what is on tap for the coming days.  We're five games into the season and with this week being a bye, I'm going to fill the time with a "mid-season" evaluation.  Yes, I'm aware we're not at the official halfway point of the season, but we've seen enough of the Huskies this year to give some analysis.  I'm going to break it down into parts over a series of posts between now   and the middle of next week.  Tomorrow I'll start with evaluating Jake Locker and the passing game.

For now, here's is some Huskies news:

• Jason Wells is out for the season and will have knee surgery later this week.  Either Devin Harris or Nate Williams will be replacing him at safety.

• As mentioned in the comments in the previous post, Devin Aguilar is now eligible as his test scores came in.  Anthony Boyles test scores will be in either tomorrow or early next week, so we should know on his eligibility soon as well.

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