Washington Football: Will Chris Petersen be next new championship coach?
Washington football has a championship-caliber coach without a national championship to his name. Could that change in 2018?
College football is divided between the haves and the have nots, and the split is drastically one-sided. Four programs in college football have an active head coach that has won a national championship: Alabama (Nick Saban), Urban Meyer (Ohio State), Clemson (Dabo Swinney) and Texas A&M (Jimbo Fisher). The remainder of the coaches in D1 football, that’s 126 teams with the addition of Liberty and relegation of Idaho in 2018, have won a combined ZERO national titles.
The sport doesn’t frequently have new champions. Five different teams have won a national title in the past 10 years. That makes it more likely than not that the next team to break through will come from the ranks of the college football elite.
Teams like Oklahoma, Michigan, Notre Dame and Florida State all check the blue-blood boxes. However, it might be Washington and offensive wizard Chris Petersen that becomes the next newcomer to lift the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy. Washington’s last title came in 1991, but Petersen has only been in Seattle since 2014.
Petersen’s Washington squad has the benefit of playing in the Pac 12 North. Oregon and Stanford aren’t pushovers. Still, they don’t traditionally hold the same firepower as some of the teams in the Big Ten East of the SEC West. The first several years of the College Football Playoff have put a premium on going undefeated. An easier conference slate with one or two marquee victories should be enough to get an undefeated team into the final four.
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Washington has that chance in 2018. Their opener against Auburn has the potential to be their prized victory and their ticket into the Playoff. All they’ll have to do is survive their own division. Once they’re in the Playoff all bets are off. They’re one of a short list of teams with any sort of Playoff experience. Perhaps their next trip could produce Petersen’s first title?