Road to 1991 Perfection: Rose is a Rose is a Rose for Gilbertson's Career Highlight

Keith Gilbertson coached college and pro football for exactly 40 seasons for nine different organizations.

There was just one mountaintop.

"Look it, there is no thrill in all of football, including the Super Bowl, like the Rose Bowl," Gilbertson said. "Like going to the Rose Bowl with Husky Nation and winning the Rose Bowl. There is nothing better. Period. End of story."

He coached in three of them for the University of Washington football program — two for Don James, the other for Rick Neuheisel — all Husky victories, beating Iowa 46-34 in 1991, Michigan 34-14 in 1992 and Purdue 34-24 in 2001.

On each of those trips to Pasadena, he barely missed out on two national championships and he won one.

And Gilbertson, acting in a variety of UW offensive coaching roles, largely was responsible for all of those points.

This comes from a man who was part of the Seattle Seahawks coaching staff headed up by Mike Holmgren that took the franchise to Super XL in Detroit, where the Pittsburgh Steelers won that contest 21-10.

Once again, a Rose Bowl victory was the coaching apex for Gilbertson, made even better when dovetailed into a national title.

"It means a lot to me because not a lot of people have done it," he said. "It means a lot to me because of Coach James, and what it meant to him, the program and the University of Washington. But it wasn't like you just reveled in it for days and days and days. You go back to work the very next day. The next season begins right after the Rose Bowl ends."

This is another in a series of vignettes about the UW's 1991 national championship team, supplementing the conversation for the pandemic-delayed and -shortened season. We're dealing with game 12 of this throwback series, the '92 Rose Bowl against Michigan.

Unofficially, Gilbertson shared in a fourth, victorious Rose Bowl for Washington. In 1978, when the Warren Moon-led Huskies beat the heavily favored Michigan Wolverines 27-20 in Pasadena, he was there.

While employed as a Utah State assistant coach, Gilbertson two years earlier had served as a graduate assistant for James, working with the Husky offensive linemen, and he had so much invested he wasn't going to miss this '78 game.

He showed up as a spectator with a ticket back then, but he didn't stay in his seat the whole time. In the fourth quarter, this young, exuberant guy got caught up in everything that was happening on the field, rushed down a Rose Bowl aisle until reaching the bottom of the seating area and jumped up on a stadium partition, startling those on the sideline below him.

Gilbertson showed his support to all those Husky offensive linemen he once worked with by bellowing over and over, "Go, you Hogs! Go, you Hogs!"

No, there was nothing quite like the Rose Bowl for Keith Gilbertson.

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