Inside The Huskies

Vines-Bright Addresses Transfer from UW to ASU

The former Husky wide receiver shared his thoughts on changing schools and going home.
Dan Raley|
Raiden Vines-Bright looks for room to run against Washington State.
Raiden Vines-Bright looks for room to run against Washington State. | Dave Sizer photo

After starting seven games as a freshman wide receiver, Raiden Vines-Bright left the University of Washington football team and went home, which was a bit of a surprise in Montlake.

After all, he seemed to be on a fast track with the Huskies after catching 24 passes for 238 yards and an LA Bowl touchdown, but he entered the transfer portal anyway and ended up with Arizona State in Tempe, which is where he's from.

In meeting with media members in the middle of the week in his new college football surroundings, the 6-foot-1, 200-pound pass-catcher stressed that going home was the biggest reason behind his transfer.

Yet Vines-Bright also seemed to intimate his first-year role with the Huskies wasn't nearly enough to keep him in Seattle.

When asked what he intends to show everyone at ASU, he said, "Just what I can do and what I didn't get to showcase at Washington. I feel like I have a lot more in my bag than I got to show."

While he didn't say it, this seemed to suggest that Vines-Bright took somewhat of a backseat to another freshman from Arizona, Dezmen Roebuck, who finished as the Huskies' second-leading pass-catcher with 42 receptions for 560 yards and 7 scores.

Maybe that gnawed at him a little.

Clearly, Jedd Fisch's coaching staff was counting on both Roebuck and Vines-Bright, as returning starters, to share the receiving load in 2026. In teaming up with returning junior quarterback Demond Williams Jr., who's to say who would have had more catches in the coming season.

It's also quite possible that Vines-Bright simply got tired of the wet and cold weather that tends to send people back to their desert climates after they've spent a full year in Seattle.

"Honestly, that home feeling," he said about being back in Tempe. "I feel a lot more happy here, positive about going to work."

While he made a significant breakthrough at the UW, Vines-Bright still had his difficult moments, all health-related.

He was injured much of 2025 spring football and then transported out of Husky Stadium in an emergency vehicle after taking a hit in the Purdue game at midseason that left him with a concussion.

So he's back home with a Sun Devils program that has been reinvigorated by coach Kenny Dillingham, who recently signed a contract extension.

With quarterback Sam Leavitt leaving for LSU, after it appeared the SEC school first made a serious run at the UW's Demond Williams Jr. and couldn't close the deal, Vines-Bright and the other receivers will have to break in a new passer.

Vines-Bright is still the guy who went to Florida and IMG Academy to finish up his high school football and onto the Northwest to begin his college career, so he hasn't necessarily been a home body. But Tempe seems right to him now.

"I'm just being happy to go play football," he said of his new team. "I feel like being home, with friends I've known since middle school, it's a very different experience from being away from home."

Vines-Bright said he's back in his comfort zone.

"I'm a lot more positive, ready to work," he said. "I want to do more things."

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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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