Huard Drops Down to Big Sky, Transfers to Rebuilding Cal Poly
Sam Huard, the former 5-star and University of Washington legacy quarterback, will drop down a football level and resume his career in the Big Sky Conference, choosing to transfer to a rebuilding Cal Poly program.
A left-hander once recruited by such high-profile teams as USC, Florida and Tennessee, Huard will play in an FCS conference against the likes of Montana, Portland State and Eastern Washington.
It's a huge sacrifice on the part of a 6-foot-2, 194-pound sophomore who found himself buried on the Husky depth chart following the 2021 coaching change from Jimmy Lake to Kalen DeBoer, could sit no longer and entered the transfer portal.
He had been linked to schools such as TCU, Stanford and Florida, but it was a matter of finding a football situation where he could play right away, and the Mustangs afforded that opportunity.
Huard will answer to a new coaching staff headed up by Paul Wulff, the former Washington State and Eastern Washington coach, and offensive coordinator Sheldon Cross, the quarterback's high school coach at Kennedy Catholic south of Seattle.
“An opportunity to go play for him again, it was definitely hard to pass up," Huard said on Seattle Sports 710, on a radio segment co-hosted by his uncle Brock Huard. "Then when I went down there on my visit last week, feeling the support and the trust and the love from all the coaches and the mentality of them and all the guys on the team, there’s such a hunger to go build something special down there."
Huard will be asked to help restore a football program coming off a 2-9 season and previously headed up by Beau Baldwin, who left after three seasons to become the Arizona State offensive coordinator. Wulff was promoted from within the staff.
The quarterback appeared in just one Husky game this past season, mopping up against the Big Sky's Portland State, a 52-6 victory.
One of Cal Poly's two wins came against Portland State, 49-42 at the end of the season, further demonstrating the levels of competition between Pac-12 and Big Sky.
Huard came to the UW after throwing for more than 13,000 yards at Kennedy Catholic, as the son and nephew for one-time Husky quarterbacks Damon and Brock Huard, respectively. Another uncle, Luke Huard, is a USC receivers coach.
He appeared in five games overall in Montlake, drawing a lone start in 2021 against Washington State in the Apple Cup. He completed 17 of 31 passes for 180 yards in a 40-13 defeat, and threw four interceptions.
Had he stayed, Huard had a reasonable chance of becoming the Huskies' starting quarterback at some point, but not until 2024 at the earliest, with the record-breaking Michael Penix Jr. and former two-season starter Dylan Morris ahead of him.
While Huard will give himself a chance to play as the Cal Poly quarterback, it still seems like a fall from grace for such a talented and highly publicized athlete. Five-star recruits don't often end up at the FCS level.
The possibility exists that he uses his time at the Big Sky school, much like a Triple-A baseball team, establishes himself as a college quarterback and transfers once more to a bigger school before he's done.
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