If not for Nick Saban announcing his retirement this offseason, Jedd Fisch might still be at Arizona. Instead, he finds himself in Seattle getting ready to take over a Washington team coming off of a national championship appearance in 2023.
It all began when Saban stepped away from the game and school he had built his legacy at and Kalen DeBoer left the Huskies for Alabama. That opened the door for Fisch to make the jump after leading Arizona to its first 10-win season in a decade.
The new Washington coach opened up on the path that led him there, saying that Saban’s retirement not only created that opportunity for him, but allowed him to analyze the way college football is evolving.
“The Nick Saban domino effect occurred,” Fisch said on The Jim Rome Show. “Coach Saban retired and Coach DeBoer went to Alabama and then this opportunity presented itself. This is a chance to be in the Big Ten. As the college landscape was changing every day, you start realizing that the cost of keeping assistant coaches was skyrocketing.
“If you couldn’t keep your assistant coaches, you were gonna end up losing players in the portal. If you’re gonna end up losing players in the portal, you’re not gonna be as successful. Three days after we talked our defensive coordinator left to go to Texas. Then as things started happening, you just started seeing that changes were on the horizon.”
Washington lost 29 players to the transfer portal this offseason, a number of whom followed DeBoer to Tuscaloosa. That being said, Fisch also had several of his former Wildcats players join him in Seattle.
It will be a much different team than the one that advanced to the title game a year ago, but that’s simply the way college football is going. Still, with Washington set to become a member of the Big Ten, Fisch knew this was a program in good position to thrive in the current landscape.
The history that comes with it is a bonus, and he’s ready to add to it.
“It was an opportunity to get to a place where you could feel there is a legacy here,” he said. “They’ve won national championships, played in 15 Rose Bowls, won conference championships. They were the No. 2 team in the country a year ago. When you can be part of coaching the No. 2 team in the country, you can’t turn that down.”
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