Road to 1991 Perfection: National Title Brought James Tears of Joy

Don James awoke early and was worried.

The day after his University of Washington football team won the 1992 Rose Bowl to finish 12-0, the coach sat up in bed and looked at the clock in his Anaheim Marriott hotel room and he didn't like what he saw.

It was 6:30 a.m.

"It's 9:30 in the East," he told his wife Carol. "We didn't win it. Nobody's got the nerve to call and give us the news."

It was time to go through a full range of emotions, one after another, none of them happy.

"We felt every kind of bitter disappointment," Carol James said at the time. "It was unbelievable the feelings. Everything went through our hearts and minds. It was almost like somebody in the family had died."

Before they knew it, this funeral procession was over.

There was just 11 minutes of agony.

At precisely 6:41, which the coach shared and was the only way this famously detail-oriented man remembered things, the phone rang.

Bob Roller from the USA Today/CNN poll was on the other end.

He was calling with the news: The Huskies were No. 1 in the coaches' rankings.

Carol James immediately began contacting family members.

It didn't take long for everyone to get the word.

At 8 a.m., All-American wide receiver Mario Bailey ran up and down the hallways, yelling, "Wake up, we're No. 1!"

A few hours later, James stepped in front of a hotel conference room of reporters to accept the national championship trophy and he did something none of these people had seen before.

The coach wept.

This is another in a series of vignettes about the UW's 1991 national championship team, supplementing the conversation for the pandemic-influenced season. We're retelling the season aftermath in this throwback series, the follow-up to the '92 Rose Bowl against Michigan, a 34-14 victory.

The unbeaten Huskies emerged as national champions in one poll, while equally unblemished Miami was voted tops in the Associated Press top 25 list, which was fine with the Husky coach, who dabbed at his eyes.

"Tears," James acknowledged to his hotel audience. "It's so difficult to express the feeling I have for these kids. I don't mind sharing it. For them not to get a piece of this, I don't know what more our guys could have done."

James was 80 when he passed away in 2013. His legacy came down to this: He took the UW to the very top of the college football world, generating success his players and even his own children would use to guide their lives as they grew older.

This included Jeni James-Simmons, one of the coach's daughters, a Husky cheerleader and an Alaska Airlines flight attendant.

"It's always wonderful when you can set a goal and accomplish your goal," she said. "That always taught me to never give up, always put in the work, always put in good time management, have good goals and you can accomplish anything."

Even at 6:41 in the morning.

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