Inside The Huskies

Holiday Is Good Bowl for Huskies, Just Not This Season

Here's why this postseason projection would be disappointing.
Dan Raley|
Dezmen Roebuck, Denzel Boston and Jonah Coleman celebrate an LA Bowl touchdown.
Dezmen Roebuck, Denzel Boston and Jonah Coleman celebrate an LA Bowl touchdown. | Dave Sizer photo

The Holiday Bowl would have been a welcome destination for the University of Washington football team this past season, but not this coming year.

Instead of playing in the way-too-early, unattended and now long-gone LA Bowl against Boise State, the Huskies would have embraced the program's first game in San Diego in 15 years and an added two and a half weeks of postseason practice.

They would have been curious to play in Snapdragon Stadium, a relatively new venue opened in 2022 for San Diego State.

That was then, but not now.

This would be the response to a CBS Sports bowl game prediction for Big Ten entries in eight months, with the UW projected to face the Virginia Tech Hokies in either late December or early January.

Like everyone else, the Huskies have much higher expectations for the coming season, such as one of the 12 playoff spots in the College Football Playoff.

They have two-thirds of their starters returning, including 80 percent of their offensive line, plus their high-value quarterback in Demond Williams Jr. after he was temporarily up for auction, and a defense that has a lot of playmaking pieces to it.

Instead, CBS sees a first-time match-up between the UW and Virginia Tech, who have no previous playing history.

Jedd Fisch gets the tradition Gatorade bath at the LA Bowl from Jacob Manu and Zach Durfee.
Jedd Fisch gets the tradition Gatorade bath at the LA Bowl from Jacob Manu and Zach Durfee. | Dave Sizer photo

Certainly there would be a certain measure of satisfaction in beating new Hokies coach James Franklin, who directed Penn State to a 35-6 rout of the Huskies in 2024 in State College -- the most lopsided defeat of the Jedd Fisch era in Montlake.

Another trip to the Holiday Bowl would be the UW's fifth over 30 years -- which would make it the Huskies' second-most attended bowl game, tying the Sun Bowl, behind the Rose Bowl, of course.

The UW still carries the memory of a 2010 San Diego bowl game win over Nebraska, 19-7, following losses in 2001 to Texas (47-43), in 1999 to Kansas State (24-20) and in 1996 to Colorado (33-21).

Yet the playoff system is the main driver behind everyone's postseason ambitions these days and the Huskies, in year three of the Fisch rebuild, will consider it something of a letdown if they don't take a sizable step forward and land back in the national conversation again after a two-year absence.

A couple of days in San Diego is always a nice alternative to the winter weather bearing down on Montlake in December. It's just not the preferred destination for what could be a much more competitive UW football team this coming season,

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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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