COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’89 : Sign of Hard Times for Huskies: James on Hot Seat

It was one of those items that you glance at, then do a quick double take to make sure that you read it correctly.

Sure enough, there it was in a bold box in the Sporting News’ college football magazine:

“Win or else. Don James, Washington. While few doubt Don James’ coaching credentials, don’t be surprised if another sub-par campaign leads to his dismissal, or resignation.”

Surprise is hardly the right word. We’re talking about Don James, who has won more games in the Pacific 10 than any other coach in conference history, the man who rejuvenated Washington’s football program and put it on a par with USC’s and UCLA’s.

Moreover, James-coached teams had played in nine consecutive bowl games until last season and a total of 10 since he became Washington’s coach in 1975.

James has had only one losing season in his 14 years at Washington, a 5-6 record in 1976 when he was just getting his program started.

He is regarded by his peers as a sound fundamentalist, an innovator in the often under-coached area of special teams and a coach with outstanding organizational ability.

Even so, the Huskies have slipped in recent years. Washington had records of 7-5, 8-3-1, 7-4-1 and 6-5 from 1985 through 1988, respectively.

The Sporting News predicted an eighth-place finish in the Pac-10 for Washington this year, although other magazines have rated the team higher.

Nonetheless, Washington is not expected to challenge for the championship. James has a young team.

“What Don has done is create his own monster,” said Ray Dorr, an assistant coach under James in the early 1980s and now the quarterback coach at USC.

Dorr doesn’t anticipate that Washington will stay in a down cycle, though, citing James’ 5-6 record in 1976 and then a Rose Bowl appearance the next season.

For sure, those who know James say that the low-key, 56-year-old coach will be harder on himself than any external pressure he might have to contend with.

James agreed, saying: “A magazine said I was on the hot seat. Nobody is going to put more pressure on me than I am going to put on myself.”

James even declined an automatic pay raise and a roll-over contract extension for five years. He said he didn’t deserve a raise in view of his team’s 6-5 record last season.

He seemed embarrassed, though, that news of his not accepting the raise had leaked out.

“I’ve done that before, just to disperse more of the raise pool to the assistant coaches,” he said. “They say you get a 4 1/2% raise and you add up the dollars and disperse them. It’s always the guy with the top salary who gets more. I didn’t deserve (a raise). I had to take some of the blame and that was a way to show it.”

As for criticism that his program has slipped, James was wryly philosophical.

“It’s incredible that I could be the president of the coaches’ association and winingest coach in Pac-10 and Husky history (which he is) and still people are complaining,” said James, laughing softly. “But that’s the thing we’ve done. We’ve added to the lost-column the last few years. People are going to look at (the record) and think, ‘Which way are you going?’ ”

So what has contributed to Washington’s fall since the early 1980s?

Seattle writers say the main factor has been the loss of capable assistant coaches over the years.

In many instances, the assistants moved on to head coaching jobs or more financially rewarding positions as assistants in the National Football League.

Dorr left Washington after the 1983 season to become head coach at Southern Illinois. Jim Mora, Chick Harris, Al Roberts, Bob Stull, Skip Hall, John Pease, Jim Heacock and Trent Walters are among others who moved on.

Assistants, of course, evaluate and recruit high school prospects and some Washington writers say that players recruited in 1985 and 1986 didn’t match previous classes in overall quality.

James acknowledged that staff errors were made in recruiting, saying it was probably the most meaningful factor in Washington’s slide from the top to a 3-5, sixth-place conference record last year.

“One of the real key things is that we turned down in our recruiting evaluation five players that we could have gotten, players who either made All-American, or All-Pac-10,” he said. “When you start making those kinds of mistakes, not only you don’t have those types of players on your team, but we had to play against them.”

James wouldn’t identify the five players, but it’s generally believed that Joe Tofflemire, an all-conference center from Arizona and a No. 2 draft choice of the Seattle Seahawks, was in that group.

James also said that Washington recruited four good linebackers in 1984 and had to play every one of them because of injuries at the position.

“If they all had redshirted, we would have had them last year and we would have won nine games easy,” he said. “Offensively, we had an experienced team.”

As it was, the once dominant Husky defense yielded an average of 344.6 yards a game and was last in rushing defense in the Pac-10.

Washington’s 6-5 record in 1988 was deceiving in the sense that the Huskies came close to beating USC and UCLA, the power teams of the conference.

The Huskies came within an incompleted two-point conversion pass of upsetting USC, losing at the Coliseum, 28-27. Earlier, in Seattle, UCLA’s tying touchdown drive in a 24-17 victory was sustained by a controversial penalty for roughing the passer.

“We should have been up by seven points against UCLA at the end of the third quarter,” James said. “Then, we got what we thought was a horrible call and they tied the game. Then, they came back on a late drive to beat us.

“However, right, or wrong, I don’t think we were as good as USC or UCLA. But when you lose those kinds of games, you probably lose another one or two down the road because if you had won those games you would be more confident, improve and play better.”

Other reasons are suggested for Washington’s recent mediocrity. Mike Wilson, a former sports information director for the school, said it’s an inevitable cycle in any coach’s program over a number of years. Stay long enough and you’ll have some lackluster seasons.

For example, USC’s John McKay had 6-4-1 seasons in 1970 and 1971, but won a national championship in 1972.

Dorr reasons that other Pac-10 teams try harder now to beat Washington because of James’ reputation, a goal more realistically obtainable than beating USC, or UCLA.

Dorr admires James, saying: “He has outstanding organizational skill. And he’s very predictable. You know exactly how he’s going to treat you. He never asks you to do something that he hasn’t done himself.”

James identified USC, UCLA, and possibly Arizona as the teams to beat this season.

“As for the rest of us, if we get people hurt, we can’t replace them as well as USC, or UCLA. They have more depth.”

James added that USC and UCLA have built in advantages, referring to the population base that the schools can tap in recruiting.

“They have that, along with good programs and good staffs,” he said.

That’s a tough combination to beat, but James was doing it, or at least staying even, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

From 1975 through 1983, James had a 5-3 record against the Trojans, but has subsequently lost four of the last five meetings.

His overall record against UCLA is 4-7-1, the Huskies having lost twice and tied once in the last three years.

So Washington has slipped back into the Pac-10 pack of teams that try to prevent USC or UCLA from winning the conference championship, but seldom succeed. It was a different format from 1977 through 1981 when Washington played in the Rose Bowl three times. It could have easily been five times if it hadn’t been for upset losses to Washington State in final regular-season games.

In both instances UCLA got the bid when Washington lost.

“Instead of us going to the Rose Bowl and Terry (Donahue) going to the Aloha Bowl, we just switched it,” James said. “He already had his leis a couple of times. That has a real impact on your overall program. Otherwise, you’ve got five Rose Bowls and you’re rocking along. But that’s life.”

James conceded, though, that Washington backed into the Rose Bowl during the 1977 season, when USC beat UCLA, depriving the Bruins of a bid.

When James became Washington’s coach, he realized that he had to recruit USC-type athletes to contend for a championship.

In an earlier interview, he said: “I told my assistants not to present a lot of guys to me for scholarships who are marginal-size linemen, or who are slow running backs. They won’t pass. Just take a can of USC film with you and play it back now and then and you’ll get an idea of whom I want you to recruit.”

It would seem that his assistants haven’t been doing their homework in recent years.

James even fired an assistant coach, Don Dorazio, who was in charge of the offensive line, after last season. It was the first assistant he has dismissed since coming to Washington from Kent State, where he also had turned a faltering program around.

He has hired Keith Gilbertson, a former head coach at Idaho, to help implement a one-back, short passing game that was so successful at Washington State last season.

Washington has mainly relied on an I-formation offense, but James, trying to regain his edge, said he’s now looking for offensive diversity.

He has also extended his ban of reporters from practice.

Last year, he banned two writers, Don Borst of the Tacoma News-Tribune, and Dick Rockne of the Seattle Times, from practice for reporting that quarterback Cary Conklin had injured his hand before the USC game.

That ban was soon extended to the entire news corps and it has carried over to this year beginning the week of Washington’s opening game Sept. 9 against Texas A & M.

“I think (the ban) is just a symptom of the pressure he has put on himself,” Rockne said.

James indicated last season that he may retire when his contract expires after the 1992 season. Before that happens, however, he is trying to regain his place in the power structure of the conference that he once shared with USC and UCLA.

He indicated that the school’s goals were more modest when he was hired 14 years ago, after Washington had endured two losing seasons under Jim Owens.

“When I came here they said, ‘If you can just be competitive and have a winning season . . . ‘ Last year, every game came down to the last minute and a half, or last drive and we had a winning season.

“But then again the standards are a lot higher. The term success is defined differently by different people.”