Dannen on UW Coaching Search

  • 9 months ago
UW athletic director Jedd Fisch gave a play by play of how he hired Jedd Fisch.
Transcript
00:00 I'll tell you what we want. We want a recruiter. And not just somebody who knew they had to recruit, but somebody like who was maniacal about it.
00:09 Who just absolutely loved to recruit and was going to put a staff together who loved to recruit.
00:15 And I can say this after every characteristic, recruiting, recruiting, recruiting is first and foremost the number one consideration in who we're looking for.
00:24 We wanted a developer, a player developer, but not just a player developer on the field.
00:30 We wanted somebody who was going to take these guys and develop them to be great men when football is done.
00:36 Maybe develop them playing the league, that's great, but when football is done, and for most people when football is done by the time they're 25,
00:43 we wanted somebody that would have a position to be a great man the rest of their lives.
00:48 We wanted somebody on the transition plan. We're moving to a new league, a different competition.
00:54 And you know, ideally I wanted somebody who had Big Ten experience, which we found.
00:59 But we wanted somebody who was ready to transition us into the Big Ten and continue to win championships once we got to the Big Ten.
01:05 We wanted somebody with energy, passion, enthusiasm. Somebody who wasn't going to change this culture, because the culture is wonderful,
01:11 but who was going to build upon it, enhance the culture that we already have.
01:15 I wanted somebody who was going to push each and every one of us someplace we've never been pushed before.
01:20 I think it's really, really important. And we wanted a winner.
01:24 Somebody who's been around winning and understands what winning is.
01:28 If you look at Jeff's resume, he's been around winners, like the greatest of the great professional college coaches.
01:35 He's been around winning, and then how does it translate?
01:38 We wanted somebody who could take that and translate it to winning, which he's shown he could do in the league that we're in.
01:45 So I didn't think we could find somebody that matched all those characteristics.
01:50 I thought it was a little bit aspirational. I thought maybe we could find somebody that hit four of the five or five of the six.
01:55 But last Saturday afternoon at about 3 o'clock, Jenn and I got our first call.
01:59 Last Saturday afternoon. I guess that was three whole days ago, right?
02:03 And after that phone call, you know, you talk about blowing your socks off, blowing the doors off, whatever it is.
02:09 I got on the phone and said, "We found the guy. This is the guy that matches everything we wanted."
02:14 And then it became, "Can we get him?"
02:17 And I had my second call with him about 10 o'clock Saturday night and asked if we could come down and meet with him and his family the following day in Tucson, which was yesterday.
02:27 Two days ago. My calendar is a little messed up.
02:33 And then we had AK on the phone laying out what the program was because I didn't want to have any surprises.
02:39 Everything that we knew about the program, he was going to know about the program.
02:42 We flew to Tucson with my team, sat in his house, met his family, had a great conversation with the family, offered him another job.
02:53 She accepted. Coach signed the MOU and here we are. So quick.
02:58 From the time I first talked to Coach until the time we got on the plane was about 30 hours.
03:03 But trust me, a lot of research had been done well in advance of any of this.
03:07 So I thought we might have the right guy, but we didn't go on the phone. I knew we had the right guy.
03:11 So, I'm pumped. I think everyone associated with Husky Footprint is going to be pumped.
03:17 And I know we went through a lot. And there's a lot of emotions. And they go up and down.
03:21 But I will tell you, we are in a great place going forward.