Troy Dannen explains what Washington was looking for in coaching search, landing on Jedd Fisch
Washington athletic director Troy Dannen wanted a lot in his new head coach to lead the Huskies. And he feels like he met the mark in landing former Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch.
As Dannen introduced Fisch at his introductory press conference on Tuesday, he ran through the criteria he wanted to meet: A strong recruiter, adept talent and personal development, Big Ten experience, a winning track record and someone to fit and enhance the culture that exists already. Dannen didn’t expect to feel like he’d fulfilled all the criteria, but he thinks Fisch meets them all.
“I thought it was a little bit aspirational. I thought maybe we could find somebody to hit four of the five or five of the six, but last Saturday afternoon about 3 o’clock, Jedd and I had our first call, last Saturday afternoon I guess that was three whole days ago. And after that phone call, you talk about blowing your socks off, blowing the doors off, whatever it is, I hung up the phone and said ‘We found the guy. This is the guy that matches everything we wanted,'” Dannen said. “And then it became ‘Can we get him?'”
Fisch is coming off a renaissance campaign at Arizona, was previously an assistant at Michigan, worked with Tom Brady in the NFL, used the portal deftly to build back the Wildcats roster and evidently showed Dannen and other in interviews that he’s the man to develop the people and culture at Washington further.
Dannen detailed that the process to bring in Fisch moved quickly after he felt it was the right choice.
“And I had my second call with him about 10 o’clock on Saturday night and asked if we could come down and meet with him and his family the following day in Tuscon, which was yesterday — two days ago. My calendar’s a little messed up. And then we had [chief of staff Aaron Knotts] on the phone laying out what the program was, because I didn’t want him to have any surprises. Everything that we knew about the program, he was going to know about the program. We flew to Tucson with my team, sat in his house, met his family, had a great conversation with the family. Offered Amber the job, she accepted. Coach signed the MOU and here we are. This went quick. From the time I first talked to coach to the time we got on the plane was about 30 hours,” Dannen said.
And at the end of the day, Dannen is excited about what the future holds.
“But trust me, a lot of research had been done well in advance of any of this. So I thought we might have the right guy but when we got off the phone, I knew we had the right guy. So, I’m pumped. I think everyone associated with Husky football is going to be pumped. And I know we went through a lot. And there’s a lot of emotions. And they go up and down. But I will tell you: We are in a great place going forward,” Dannen said.