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Inside The Huskies

Bigger Fisch To Fry: UW Coach Draws National Award Consideration

The Husky coach is in just his sixth season as a head man at the college level.
Dan Raley|
Jedd Fisch and Bret Bielema of Illinois are both on the 2026 Bobby Dodd Trophy watch list.
Jedd Fisch and Bret Bielema of Illinois are both on the 2026 Bobby Dodd Trophy watch list. | Dave Sizer photo

Everyone knows him, but Jedd Fisch doesn't get a lot of attention for the various coaching accolades out there.

Doesn't register high on the lists that rank the people in his profession.

Doesn't have a discernible reputation just yet.

That's because he's only been a head coach for five seasons so far at Washington and Arizona while dealing with a pair of program rebuilds.

Well, someone finally noticed his painstaking work from Montlake to Tucson -- on Thursday, Fisch was one of 20 coaching leaders named to the watch list for the Bobby Dodd Trophy, which is given to the nation's coach of the year.

Indiana's Curt Cignetti won this bauble last season after leading the Hoosiers to a national championship.

No Husky coach has collected this award, which was created in 1976 and named for the former Georgia Tech leader who went 165-64-8 for the Atlanta team and died in 1988.

The legendary Don James wasn't a recipient, though the award was in play for all but his first season at the UW.

Nor was Chris Petersen, at least while guiding the Huskies, though Petersen was the Dodd winner in 2010 while coaching at Boise State.

Not even Kalen DeBoer, who went 11-2 and 14-1 in his two seasons in Montlake, could land this piece of hardware.

Besides Fisch, the coaches named to the 2026 watch list are Illinois' Bret Bielema, Louisville's Jeff Brohm, Cignetti, Miami's Mario Cristobal, Boise State's Spencer Danielson, Ohio State's Ryan Day, DeBoer, TCU's Sonny Dykes, Texas A&M's Mike Elko, Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman, Tennessee's Josh Heupel, Georgia Tech's Brent Key, Oregon's Dan Lanning, USC's Lincoln Riley, Texas' Steve Sarkisian, Georgia's Kirby Smart and Oklahoma's Brent Venables.

Of this current group of coaches, Fisch has defeated Bielema, Danielson, Riley and Venables in head-to-head match-ups, while losing to Brohm, Cignetti, Cristobal, Day, Ferentz, Lanning and Sitake.

At his two college coaching stops, Fisch has a combined 31-32 record, not counting two games he split as the UCLA interim coach for the fired Jim Mora.

He can count notable victories over blue bloods Oklahoma, Michigan and USC so far. He's won two of three bowl games, beating the Sooners and Venables in the 2023 Alamo Bowl and Boise State and Danielson in the 2025 LA Bowl while losing to Brohm by a point in the 2024 Sun Bowl.

Fisch will go head to head with Cignetti and Ferentz in Husky Stadium this fall, and face Lanning and Riley on the road.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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