Sarkisian has tough task to turn around Washington

SEATTLE — With a couple hundred fans, cheerleaders, alumni and students chanting "Sark!" and the school's band playing "Bow Down to Washington," Southern California offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian was introduced as the Huskies' new football coach. He replaces Tyrone Willingham.

"I love it. Wow, what a moment!" a wide-eyed Sarkisian said Monday morning, looking to his left past his wife, his 6-year-old daughter, Ashley, and 3-year-old son, Brady.

There, he saw four shirtless students who had S-A-R-K painted in Husky purple on their chests.

"I can't wait to get this thing going," he said.

The 34-year-old Sarkisian, once a BYU starting quarterback, becomes the third-youngest coach in major college football, after Lane Kiffin of Tennessee and Pat Fitzgerald at Northwestern, and gets a five-year deal worth $10 million plus incentives for his first head coaching job. Sarkisian will continue to coach USC through its Rose Bowl on New Year's Day against Penn State, while recruiting for Washington.

Washington's third coach in five years met with the team Monday morning and said his first calls to Huskies recruits were going to be Monday afternoon.

"I'm going to bring a lot of passion to these kids. We just have to change the way they think," Sarkisian said.

Sarkisian's task seems as tall as nearby Mount Rainier: Turn around a once-proud program that just completed the first 0-12 season in Pac-10 history. Washington was the only winless team in major college football, and Willingham was 11-37 in his four seasons with the Huskies.

"It's going to happen fast," Sarkisian said at a news conference inside Husky Stadium's Don James Center — named after the coach who led the Huskies to Rose Bowls and national championship opportunities, the standard against which Sarkisian will be judged and Willingham failed.

Sarkisian promised to open practices and the program to boosters, fans, alumni and media. That would be the opposite of Willingham's closed-ranks regime that chafed many around the former powerhouse school.

That would also model the open program run at USC by Sarkisian's mentor, Pete Carroll.

"Steve Sarkisian is an outstanding young coach who did great things here at USC," Carroll said. "He's savvy. He's tough. He's charismatic. And he's a real leader."