Key Points:
- Jed Fisch made it clear on Monday that rumors tying him to other programs are unfounded.
- The Washington head coach said those linking him to jobs like Florida and UCLA “have no idea.
- Fisch said he’s focused on Washington’s young core and recent program investments.
The college football regular season is coming to a close over the next couple of weeks, but the madness that somehow always finds its way into this sport is far from over.
As we head into Week 12 of the college football season, there are 13 FBS openings across the country. Unlike in past years, where there seemed to be a laundry list of candidates across the country waiting to make the leap to a major opening like a Florida or LSU, the perceived pool of candidates is much smaller this time around.
The consensus around the sport is that we may see coaches like Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss or Mike Elko at Texas A&M leave a big program for a job that is even bigger. However, there is no guarantee at this point as some of the hottest candidates seem poised for a College Football Playoff run.
One coach linked to both the Florida and UCLA openings is Washington Huskies head coach Jedd Fisch, who has ties to both. The second-year coach in Seattle graduated from Florida in 1998 and also served as a graduate assistant in 1999-2000. After primarily working in the NFL for the next decade or so, Fisch was hired by Jim Mora at UCLA in 2017, where he actually became the interim head coach after Mora’s firing.
While he’s a popular pick, he made it clear on Monday that those linking him to other jobs simply aren’t aware of his plans.
Jedd Fisch denies interest in leaving Washington
“Those lists are made by people that have no idea what’s going on, honestly,” Jedd Fisch said on Monday via Aaron Coe. “They don’t know what’s happening in our program. They have no idea how excited I am about the youth in our program. They have no idea how excited I am about the fact that we’re playing six or seven true freshmen. No idea how excited I am about the fact that Demond Williams, I believe, has a chance over the next year or two years after this to be one of the all-time best quarterbacks that have come through this area.”
Jedd Fisch also expressed how out of touch the people who think he’s leaving are, expressing that they truly don’t know how happy he is in Seattle.
“I don’t think that they would know how I enjoy coaching here, that we’ve spent a ton of money into building this program the way we want to build it, that I had a great hand in all the facilities,” Fisch said. “I was a big part of making the decisions on how we wanted to recreate this space to give our players an unbelievable opportunity to have a recovery room that they never had, working on making sure that they have the best nutrition they could possibly have, give them great new meeting rooms, new office spaces for our coaches.”
Sitting at 6-3, the No. 23 Huskies likely aren’t poised for a College Football Playoff run this year, but do have a chance to win 10 games if they win the rest of their regular season contests and an eventual bowl game.
The Huskies host the Purdue Boilermakers (2-8) on Saturday, with kickoff at 7:00 p.m. ET and the game airing on FS1.