Jedd Fisch calls out people who diminish value of bowl games

The regular season has come to an end and with that bowl season is around the corner. The postseason in college football has changed in recent seasons, though, and with that, there has been some devaluing of the bowl games themselves, much to the chagrin of Washington Huskies head coach Jedd Fisch.

Ahead of bowl season, Fisch was asked if his focus at Washington this season would be more focused on preparing for the game schematically or trying to develop the team for the future. From there, Fisch explained why he puts so much value on winning in bowl season.

“Glad you asked that question,” Jedd Fisch said. “I don’t agree, I don’t like the fact that people don’t give credit to bowl games. I think bowl games are exactly what they were, and people have decided not to make them that.”

With emphasis on the sport put on making it to the College Football Playoff, there are some people who put less value on simply making a bowl game. In other cases, players are more comfortable not playing to prepare for the NFL Draft or enter to Transfer Portal. Still, Jedd Fisch sees value in what bowl games represent to teams.

“These are opportunities for players to play in a postseason game. They are opportunities for players who gave a ton of blood, sweat and tears in spring ball, in training camp, in the season, during 6 a.m. workouts, lifting all throughout November and December to be able to play in a game. For some reason, we’ve decided that they’re not as important. I don’t agree,” Fisch said.

“I don’t think it matters if you’ve won six and you’re 6-6 or if you’ve won nine and you’re 9-3 — if you have a chance to play in a bowl game, it should be a championship mentality, a championship opportunity, and our goal is to go into that bowl game and win. Our goal is to go into that bowl game and compete at the highest level. Play our absolute best. Practice our hardest.”

This year, Washington is set to play Louisville in the Sun Bowl at the end of December. It’s a game that, from what Jedd Fisch shared, the Huskies are going to take seriously in their preparation.

“We’ll spend two weeks preparing for Louisville. We’ll spend what would be about a week and a half getting better as a football team. We are all in, in the bowl world. I think that players should be rewarded for going to bowl. I think coaches should be rewarded for going to bowls,” Fisch said.

“I think it is a very important part of this process, especially when you play a nine-game conference season, not an eight-game conference season or schedule when you have to play in the Big Ten and you play games like we did at Penn State and at Oregon and at Indiana and at Iowa and a neutral site game against our rival that for our team to be there we’re very grateful. We’re very appreciative and we’re gonna live it up.”

2024 was Jedd Fisch’s first season at Washington and it was Washington’s first season in the Big Ten. With that, there was a bit of an adjustment period. Still, the Huskies got to bowl eligibility and now they’ll look to embrace that opportunity.