The Myth of Chris Petersen

Media day quotes invariably fall into one of two categories: things that are intentionally unenlightening, and things that are inadvertently insightful. Predictably enough, the former are legion, but on Thursday, at Pac-12 Media Days, Washington linebacker Travis Feeney was kind enough to dish out one of the latter.

"Something that's unique and different about Coach Pete is just caring about you as a man, caring about you as a person, about who you are," he said. "What are you going to do with life after football? How are you going to become a better man… how are you going to be with a family? Stuff like that. I think it really helps us out as people and grow."

'Coach Pete' is Chris Petersen, the Huskies' second-year coach and purported program savior, who notably compiled an .876 winning percentage at Boise State mostly by having inherited a successful program from his predecessors. But he's interesting because he does earnestness so well that his players describe him by unwittingly invoking how rare basic decency is in big-time college athletics. In this often scummy world, Chris Petersen is only minimally scummy.

Not that any coach would cop to the alternative, of course; every coach references at least one player who "does things the right way." But the majority of Petersen's peers haven't branded a slogan for players of considerable moral fiber – Petersen calls them OKGs, or Our Kind Of Guys. Nor, for that matter, are most coaches willing to ignore the on-field ramifications of pressing the eject button on anyone who breaks from that protocol, the way Petersen sunk his secondary after kicking cornerback and eventual first-round draft pick Marcus Peters off the team in November. This is a dude who convinces his players it's cool to make lists outlining their goals of how they can be better sons and brothers. This would be considered tacky if it weren't so uncompromisingly genuine.

Naturally, all of this has very little to do with how he got his job. Petersen is a commodity because of bottom-line results, the kind he garnered by leading Boise to its first BCS Bowl just ten years after it played its first Division I game. Running back Deontae Cooper said he was familiar with Petersen prior to him taking the Washington job because of his winning record at Boise. "I knew 92 and 12" – as in, 92 wins against 12 losses in eight seasons with the Broncos. These are two of the three numbers that shape how Petersen is regarded within the college football sphere; the last one is '2,' which is his number of Fiesta Bowl wins. These are undeniably gaudy figures, impressive out of context as his personality and coaching philosophy are within it. As a result, he is expected to win big at Washington. This time he has more resources available than he had at Boise. It's almost accepted that Chris Petersen will eventually succeed because he's too great to fail.

This perception about Petersen is and has always been wrong. More than any other recent coach of note, people take everything Petersen has accomplished at face value. They note the list of teams he's beaten – which includes blue bloods like Oklahoma, Georgia, Oregon (twice) and Virginia Tech, as well as Boise's contemporaries, fellow giant slayers like TCU and Utah – and they conflate Petersen accordingly. In college football you are who you beat.

But the reality is that Petersen didn't build Boise State. He wasn't even the second guy in line. Dirk Koetter started the Broncos' rise. He was succeeded by Dan Hawkins. Both Koetter and Hawkins compiled multiple double-digit win seasons at BSU en route to landing — and then getting bounced from — jobs at Arizona State and Colorado, respectively. The Broncos were largely built by Hawkins when they finished the 2006-07 season undefeated after famously toppling Oklahoma to win the Fiesta Bowl in Petersen's debut season as head coach. The quarterback and top four leaders in receiving yardage were all seniors that season, while eight of the top ten tacklers were upperclassmen. By Petersen's own admission, the job didn't require a ton in the way of adjustments after he was promoted from offensive coordinator. He simply took the house they constructed and added on rooms.

"I was part of what we did over there at Boise anyway, so you make a few tweaks in the way you go," he said. "That's a pretty easy transition. Being a new head coach for the first time, it's different — very different — but it's overall what the program's all about. Tweak here, tweak there, and keep evolving."

Petersen's biggest accomplishment was finding Kellen Moore, the floppy-haired lefty most responsible for shifting a formerly ground-and-pound offense into an aerial assault. The pair were immensely successful. Boise State went 50-3 in Moore's four years as starter, including a Fiesta Bowl win in 2009. But the further Petersen is removed from Moore, the more pertinent it is to ask whether the quarterback made him instead of Moore simply being a product of Petersen's genius, as most assumed at the time. To wit, Boise lost seven games in Petersen's final two seasons, or more than twice as many as he did in his inaugural season and all the Moore years combined. A bad run, perhaps, but Petersen also posted three losses in 2007 — as many as that entire five-year glory stretch — before Moore arrived to vault the program back up.

Even Petersen's upset wins can be questioned. It's simply much easier to gear up for two massive games per year — usually at or near the bookends of a conference slate in which Boise always enjoyed a talent advantage over its league-mates — than it is to beat top opponents week in and out. That might read as dismissive, but even Petersen himself admits it's true. "I remember when I first got [to Washington] and took the job, I was under no illusions," he said. "My opening statement was something to the effect of, 'My football life got significantly tougher'… It's really hard to get momentum going because it's such a tough, hard game every week." There is a reason why Kyle Whittingham's Utah, who defeated Alabama in the 2008 Sugar Bowl, has finished fifth in their division in all but one of their four seasons since moving up to the Pac-12. Similarly, Gary Patterson's TCU Horned Frogs won the 2010 Rose Bowl but slogged to 11-14 in their first two seasons in the Big 12 before breaking through last year. It is one thing to usurp a power conference school with a month to prepare, and another entirely to have to do that every week.

The biggest difference between Petersen, Whittingham and Patterson is that the latter two had to take on new conferences with the same talent, while Petersen arrived in the Pac-12 with high-caliber talent already on hand. Yet that, too, is a disadvantage. The benefit of familiarity is long gone, replaced by the foreign surroundings of a city and school he is only now beginning to truly understand. He has maintained from the beginning that it would take 18 to 24 months to get the team familiar with his coaching. He admitted Thursday, "it's probably going to be closer to 24 months." As for recruiting? "It's harder," he concedes, because now he must toil against the likes of USC, Oregon and Stanford for talent as opposed to battling San Diego State, Nevada and Wyoming.

Petersen is not under pressure to win now, but he may never live up to his reputation either. It's easy to give Petersen a mulligan on his debut 8-6 season at Washington, until one ponders how, exactly, his defense finished 97th nationally with three All-Americans (Danny Shelton, Shaq Thompson and Hau'oli Kiaha), two pass rushers who combined for an obscene 32 sacks (Kiaha and Andrew Hudson), a freshman All-American (Budda Baker) and, for half a season, Peters. Scheme familiarity will mitigate some of that downside moving forward, but Petersen squandered a unique opportunity: it's unlikely Washington will once again field such a collection of defensive talent. The Huskies have been picked to finish fourth in the Pac-12 North, and truthfully even that could be a touch too high with massive holes on both sides of the ball.

It's difficult to envision a scenario in which Petersen enters his third season in charge of Washington with a record above .500. This is hardly Chris Petersen the conqueror. But he's never been more than a good coach who inherited great circumstances and capitalized accordingly. The myth that followed ought to give him at least four seasons to get things straightened out in Seattle. The best thing he can do in the meantime is to promote the culture he's trying to install, if only for the PR boost. But the earnest Petersen isn't probably that cynical about it.