Kalen DeBoer's 12 Days of Husky Football Christmas

University of Washington football came apart at the seams and hit its lowest ebb in program history in 2008, when Tyrone Willingham's team ran the table of futility and finished a shuddering 0-12.

We bring this up because that very same year, three states over in South Dakota, a relatively new college head coach named Kalen DeBoer was directing the University of Sioux Falls Cougars to their second 14-0 record and successful NAIA national championship run in three seasons. He was building serious career momentum back then that has barely waned since.

It would take the Huskies and DeBoer another 14 years before they would come together, with this man returning the UW to a highly disciplined system of preparation, providing a winning touch right away and insisting that top-shelf success become a standard-bearer in Montlake again.

On Christmas Day, DeBoer arrives in San Antonio, Texas, accompanied by his reinvigorated UW football team to face the Texas Longhorns in the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 29. Entering this first-season finale, the Huskies have done everything he promised and much, much more.

On the day he was introduced at a media event held in the Husky Stadium coaches offices, DeBoer insisted he wasn't rebuilding the program, that he didn't want his inherited seniors thinking their final season wouldn't count for something, that he intended to rescue it from its 4-8 dumpster dive and return it to respectability.

All coaches in that position of newness always say that sort of thing, don't they?

Later when asked how many wins would be sufficient for his first season, a question giving him an out to struggle some as he settled in, which is what happened to his Husky predecessors such as Don James and Chris Petersen in the beginning, DeBoer responded matter of fact that he only plays for championships.

That was well and good, but Jimmy Lake's previous hubris had left fans and media members just a little cautious when they heard this sort of bold talk.

However, DeBoer did something Lake didn't do — he delivered in a huge manner.

Seattle just doesn't seem right as a city when UW football is struggling in a big way, when there are empty seats in the so-called best setting in college football. Right away, DeBoer put the community back in a comfortable place by putting all the pieces back together and he used his surefire yet simple approach to get it done.

"I think of the things we do a great job of is just being genuine," he said. "That's a strength of our staff."

His players responded in a positive way right off to this straight-up approach and they returned to winning games, Big Ten games, rivalry games, road games. The horrors of 2021 quickly were erased.

🔥🔥🔥BOW'DOWN! https://t.co/WPpU7HXUL4
— Justin Tuitele (@shackz43) December 8, 2022

Taking stock of this Husky coach's early achievements is a lot like sitting around the Christmas tree, opening up a lot of presents and being overly surprised by what's inside. Each DeBoer development came so fast the fan base could be excused for being caught off guard by it all.

Long ago, Willingham went a miserable 0-for-12 and left college coaching, not voluntarily. In keeping with the Christmas theme, we've singled out a dozen Kalen DeBoer days of football gift-giving. Who wouldn't want a Penix in a pear tree?

DEBOER'S 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

1. DeBoer's 10-2 record is the greatest first-season showing by a Husky football coach in the program's 133-year history by a full two victories over Chris Petersen's debut ledger in 2014.

2. The Alamo Bowl is the UW's first postseason game in three seasons and it matches DeBoer against a former Husky football coach in Texas' Steve Sarkisian, who left Seattle well in advance of completing the job he was hired to do.

3. DeBoer's Huskies finished ranked No. 9 in the Associated Press final regular-season poll, their highest position in four seasons since they were pegged seventh going into the 2018 Oregon game.

4. DeBoer's Huskies toppled Oregon 37-34 on the road, no small achievement. He directed just the UW's third win over the long dominant Ducks in the past 17 outings covering 20 years.

5. The coach won the Apple Cup in his first try, beating Washington State 51-33 in Pullman, a year after the Cougars' biggest victory in the rivalry, a 27-point romp.

6. By winning all seven games at Husky Stadium, DeBoer's UW team was the first to go undefeated at home in four seasons, since Petersen's next-to-last outfit went 6-0 in 2018.

7. His hand-selected portal transfer quarterback Michael Penix Jr. led the nation in passing (4,354 yards), something previously done at the UW only by Sonny Sixkiller (1970) and Don Heinrich (1950 and 1952).

8. DeBoer supplied the UW with its first pair of 1,000-yard receivers in a season in Rome Odunze (1,088) and Jalen McMillan (1,040). Two turtle doves?

9. He made significant recruiting inroads with the Huskies receiving a No. 22 national ranking from Sports Illustrated's All-American after landing the state's No. 1 player in cornerback Caleb Presley, convincing wide receiver Germie Bernard to return to the program from Michigan State and securing a veteran cornerback in Oklahoma State's Jabbar Muhammad.

10. DeBoer, in balloting submitted by himself and his conference peers, was selected co-Pac-12 Coach of the Year with Oregon State's equally deserving Jonathan Smith, with the Beavers leader later quipping, " "I might have won the thing outright if I didn't vote for the guy."

11. With their first season still not even in the books, DeBoer and his offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb received generous contract extensions for making so much happen so quickly.

12. Finally, DeBoer has built a football culture so fun and exciting that a half-dozen Husky players so far with sufficient talent and eligibility remaining — Zion Tupuola-Fetui, Bralen Trice, Troy Fautanu, Tuli Letuligasenoa, McMillan and Penix — felt compelled to announce they were delaying their NFL aspirations in favor of playing another season for this coach. At other schools, the players tend to opt out at this time of the year; in Montlake, they opt in.

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