College Football Grades Are In; See How UW Fared
Remember that college professor with the bad haircut and without any personality who took great pleasure in telling everyone how he was a tough grader? That you either did the work or crawled out of his class on your hands and knees?
Meet Mr. USA TODAY.
Iron-fisted, cutthroat, red marking pen in hand.
Prepare to weep, cringe and look for some knee pads.
The University of Washington football team will have to take his class all over again next year, only with a sense of purpose this time.
There's no getting around it — the Huskies, with a 4-8 season ledger, failed. Miserably. Embarrassingly so.
In its postseason exercise, USA TODAY slapped a grade on each of the 130 FBS teams. Check out the list here.
It gave the UW, under Jimmy Lake's shaky lesson plan, an F.
Try and show that to mom and dad.
The Huskies were one of six schools that received the lowest grade possible.
Out of 10 dozen.
Clearly, they attended too many frat parties and not enough study hall.
The Huskies brought up the bottom of this USA TODAY class curve with a couple of familiar faces and couple that weren't.
Arkansas State finished 2-10, with a bad loss to the UW — F
USC similarly went 4-8 and changed coaches — F
Connecticut, more misguided Huskies, 1-11 — F
Florida International, likewise tried to do nothing at all, 1-11 — F
Texas, all gas, no grades, came in at 5-7 — F
Could there be a list like this without Steve Sarkisian's name on it?
USA TODAY gave no explanation for its grading system other than to suggest it was for expectations met or missed.
The Huskies, remember, were ranked 20th in the Associated Press preseason poll. They had 80 percent of their starters returning. The biggest offensive line in school history. A defense considered among the nation's best. A schedule considered highly manageable.
Instead, the UW won four games, and just barely eked out three of them.
While Arkansas State was everyone's punching bag, the Huskies had to go to overtime to edge 5-7 California, take 1-11 Arizona down to the wire to pull out a victory and rescue a win from 3-9 Stanford in the waning moments.
There was nothing chest-beating about any of that. It was survival only.
For that matter, Cal received a C from USA TODAY apparently for meeting its not so lofty expectations, and Arizona and Stanford each graded out with a D for doing slightly more with their talent level suggested.
Again, show it to your parents, Huskies. You got an F.
Of the rest of the Pac-12, USA TODAY handed Colorado a D+, Arizona State a C, Oregon a C+, Washington State, Oregon State and UCLA all a B, and Utah an A-.
The good thing coming out of this is the UW has changed tutors, from Lake to a guy named Kalen DeBoer. He seems more serious about football academics, accountability, the bottom line.
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