Jim Moore: If UW had a winning record, would Jimmy Lake still get fired? No way

When you’re a Coug like I am, your favorite reality series is the one going on at Washington, which has somehow managed to take the headlines away from our own fiasco at Washington State with Nick Rolovich last month.

Jake Dickert replaced the ousted non-vaccinated coach on an interim basis and has proved impressive enough that I’m hoping he’ll be the permanent coach after the Cougs beat the Huskies in the Apple Cup. Athletic director Pat Chun should be waiting in the Husky Stadium tunnel with a four-year contract offer after that happens, ending his national search for a new head coach.

How can I say the Cougs will win the Apple Cup after losing every Apple Cup since 2013? Have you seen what’s been going on with the Dawgs this season? They lost to Montana, played poorly at Michigan, have been generally awful all season on offense, nearly lost to winless Arizona, fired their offensive coordinator, suspended their head coach for one game for shoving a player on the sideline of the Oregon game and finished things off on Sunday by firing Jimmy Lake.

I fully expect the Huskies to lose to Colorado this week and the Cougs next week to polish off a 4-8 season, followed by the announcement of a new head coach who will try to save the athletic director’s job by being better than the athletic director’s choice of a head coach the last time around.

As AD hot seats go, Jen Cohen’s is sizzling after this Jimmy Lake circus along with whatever the heck is going on with the Washington men’s basketball team, where another of her coaching hires, Mike Hopkins, is struggling big-time and on the ropes himself.

Meanwhile, Washington State is in a terrific position with its football team, seemingly in good hands with Dickert and quarterback Jayden de Laura, and its basketball team looks like a March Madness contender under coach Kyle Smith.

A Portland sports radio talk show host asked me last week which I enjoyed more, Cougar success or Husky misery, and I bared my pathetic soul by admitting that anytime the Dawgs experience tough times, I’m sick enough to be thoroughly entertained and looking forward to the next episode.

It’s been hard to keep up with the goings on and hard to understand what happened to Lake, the logical choice to replace Chris Petersen when he quit after the 2018 season. Side note: Which was more surprising, the fact that he quit or that a guy who didn’t like dealing with the media is now part of the media and appearing to enjoy himself as a FOX college football analyst?

I’m sure if Cohen sat me down and was more forthcoming with details than she was on Sunday in a Zoom call with reporters, I’d understand why Lake was fired. But as it is, with what we know, I don’t think he should have been dismissed. I mean, Lake didn’t even get a full season as head coach — last year didn’t count with it being only four games during a COVID-depleted season.

So let’s see, the Huskies were 4-5 under Lake this year. Not good, sure, but you can find a thousand coaches, especially those who have never been head coaches before, who struggled in their first year before hitting their stride.

And then he said something stupid about the Huskies not recruiting against the Ducks because Washington is in a different academic league. He butchered the delivery, but so what? At least he tried to take a shot at the Ducks, and if I’m a Husky fan, I’d at least give him an A for effort.

Then he followed that up by shoving a player during the Oregon game, trying to shoo him away from a potential altercation with an Oregon player. Probably because I’m old and therefore clueless, particularly in today’s world, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. But Good Lord was I wrong about that. Lake was suspended from coaching in the next game against Arizona State because of that incident, the first step toward the ax falling on Sunday.

I would bet you my life that if the Dawgs were 8-1 or 7-2 or even 6-3 instead of 4-5, Lake would still be the coach, but Cohen insisted otherwise when she was asked about that in the Zoom conference, an answer that made my eyes roll. I’d go so far as to say if the Huskies had beaten Oregon, he wouldn’t have been fired because Washington would have been in position to win the Pac-12 North and consequently the Pac-12 championship too.

Excuses would have been made instead of harsh judgments. Someone would have said that’s “Jimmy being Jimmy,” a passionate coach who momentarily lost his cool, not some sort of madman on the sideline.

Then again, as I mentioned, there must be more to the story. Hugh Millen, a Sports Radio KJR analyst, said some players considered Lake a “tyrant.” OK, let’s say Millen’s right about that, which I’m assuming he is. We never heard anything of that nature when Lake was the Huskies’ defensive coordinator. Maybe his ego exploded and he changed his demeanor when he became the head coach.

Even if that were the case, he would have been viewed as a tough-love coach if the Huskies had a winning record and maybe it was the type of strict discipline the players needed.

Lake was rightfully criticized for hiring offensive coordinator John Donovan, who was canned after the Oregon game just before Lake was suspended and seven days before Lake was canned himself. Sorry for the run-on sentence, but things have been happening at a rapid-fire pace at Washington of late.

As bad as the Huskies’ offense was, I’d even give Lake a mulligan for that hire. Shouldn’t he have been given the opportunity to make up for that mistake by hiring a better offensive coordinator the next time around?

I don’t know, the whole matter doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, and to his credit, Lake took the high road with a tweet on Monday, saying: “Purple and Gold run through my veins. Proud to have been a Husky. Go Dawgs!” The cynical side of me thinks it’s easier to take that high road when you have $9.9 million coming in severance pay, but still, it was a classy tweet from a coach who deserved better.

So now the Huskies will finish their season with an interim coach, Bob Gregory, who’s a Coug by the way, while Cohen and her search committee look for the next coach, thinking they’ll find the best candidate available even though that guy must wonder if it’s a smart move to hook his wagon to Cohen’s since her job security is wobbly at best.

Husky fans are flocking to flat screens at home instead of Husky Stadium, showing up as empty seats more than ever before. But everyone will be watching to see if Cohen makes the right hire at the most critical juncture of her tenure at Washington.

Jim Moore has covered Washington’s sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. You can find him on Twitter @cougsgo, and on 950 KJR-AM, where he co-hosts a sports talk show from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays.

This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 10:22 AM with the headline "Jim Moore: If UW had a winning record, would Jimmy Lake still get fired? No way."