Inside The Huskies

Looking At All Those New Head Coaches With Past UW Connections

Recently hired JaMarcus Shephard at Oregon State and Tosh Lupoi at Cal have the Huskies on their resumes.
Dan Raley|
Then Huskies coaches Tosh Lupoi, left, sends in signals during the 2013 Fight Hunger Bowl against BYU.
Then Huskies coaches Tosh Lupoi, left, sends in signals during the 2013 Fight Hunger Bowl against BYU. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Just as JaMarcus Shephard was energetically introducing himself around Corvallis on Tuesday as the new Oregon State coach, then Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi was 45 minutes away in Eugene and finalizing a deal that would make him the California coach.

It was a good day to be a former University of Washington assistant now working his way up the Xs and Os ladder.

Add to that one-time UW linebacker/safety Jim Mora recently becoming Colorado State's new coach, and that's a lot of people with Montlake connections shaping the college football landscape these days.

Once Lupoi, 44, got hired in Berkeley, he became the eighth current college head coach who has UW coaching experience on his resume.

JaMarcus Shephard is introduced as the new Oregon State coach by athletic director Scott Barnes.
JaMarcus Shephard is introduced as the new Oregon State coach by athletic director Scott Barnes. | Kevin Neri/Statesman Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The downside to this trend is one-time Husky defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox was fired as the Cal head coach to provide an opening for Lupoi to move up. Those two worked together in Montlake, with Lupoi answering to Wilcox on Steve Sarkisian's staff.

And one-time Husky offensive coordinator Jonathan Smith on Chris Petersen's staff was recently let go as the Michigan State coach.

The most visible active head coaches with UW connections, of course, are Alabama's Kalen DeBoer, who coached the Huskies in 2022-23, and Texas' Sarkisian, who led them in 2009-13.

Each are seeking berths for their teams in the College Football Playoff, with the ninth-ranked Crimson Tide (10-2 overall, 7-1 SEC) and 13th-rated Longhorns (9-3 overall, 6-2 SEC) strong candidates to qualify for the 12-team bracket.

Shephard worked as the receivers coach for DeBoer during their two seasons in Seattle and left the same post at Alabama to take over the Beavers.

Lupoi was part of Sarkisian's staff in 2012-13, a defensive-line coach who once answered directly to Wilcox, who was the UW defensive coordinator.

Elsewhere, Jeff Choate is in his second year as the Nevada head coach, having worked for both Chris Petersen and Sarkisian's UW staffs over 2013-15. He's coming off a 3-9 season with the Wolf Pack.

Eric Schmidt, DeBoer's edge-rusher coach at the UW for two years, just completed his first season as the head coach at North Dakota, where he has guided the Fighting Hawks (8-5) into the FCS playoffs and a first-round victory over Tennessee Tech with at least one postseason game to come.

Keep winning, and Schmidt could encounter Bobby Hauck, another with UW connections, along the way in the postseason.

Hauck is the head coach at Montana, another FCS playoff qualifier (11-1) and the third-seeded team in the bracket. He previously served as the Husky defensive backs coach for Rick Neuheisel in1999-2002.

And, more memorably, Hauck is known as as the Montana coach who beat the UW 13-7 to open the 2021 season at Husky Stadium.

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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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