Tormey returns to Palouse with Washington staff

LEWISTON – In October of last year, Chris Tormey was the head coach of a University of Nevada football team with a 5-2 record and seemingly bright prospects, still aglow from a resounding upset on the road against his former employer, Washington.

At least one dot.com analyst was hailing Tormey as a candidate for more high-profile jobs, including the one at Washington if it came open.

Well, it’s open, and Tormey is already on the UW campus. But he’s apparently not a candidate.

In yet another example of the volatility of his profession, Tormey’s head-coaching stock, after reaching that peak midway through the 2003 season, nose-dived in the ensuing weeks as the Wolf Pack lost four of their last five games and the coach was fired.

A year later, his prospects haven’t exactly clarified, since he’s part of the Keith Gilbertson staff at Washington that got the heave-ho two weeks ago, effective at the end of the season.

Their final game as a staff will be today at Pullman in the Apple Cup against archrival Washington State.

In returning to the Palouse, Tormey, 49, a Gonzaga Prep graduate, may be reminded of the less tempestuous time he spent as head coach at Idaho, where he posted a 33-23 record in five seasons at his alma mater and led the Vandals to a Humanitarian Bowl victory in 1998.

Tormey took time out from Apple Cup preparations to discuss the high and low points of his post-Vandals career, but his tone brightened considerably when the subject was UI itself.

“I loved it at Idaho,” he said. “That was a special, special place to me and my family. We had some good teams there, we had great chemistry and we loved living in Moscow. Those are going to be some of the best years of my life as I look back.”

He doesn’t agree with his successor at UI, Tom Cable, that the football program should return to NCAA Division I-AA status. The Vandals moved to 1-A during the second year of Tormey’s tenure, generating an initial momentum at that level that Cable couldn’t sustain in his four years.

“That would be the easy way out,” Tormey said of the I-AA notion. “I don’t think it’s necessarily the right way. Now that the Vandals have an affiliation with the Western Athletic Conference, it’s going to make it a lot more viable job. We won at that level. So it’s been done.”

In some ways, Tormey’s recent adventures have resembled Cable’s.

He left UI in 2000 to take the Nevada job, and he views the decision in the same light with which Cable views his decision to take the Idaho position the same year – as a miscalculation.

He doesn’t specify a reason. But others have noted how difficult it can be to coach at a school whose athletic director is also the former coach in the sport in question. That was the case at Nevada, where A.D. Chris Ault has had three tenures as football coach.

“Let’s just put it this way,” Tormey said. “Knowing what I know now about that job and about the place and the people involved, I never would have taken it. You don’t know that going in. I was naive and I got into a situation that was not good for me professionally.”

Taking over a program that had gone 3-8 the previous year, Tormey seemed to be moving the Wolf Pack forward. One of his assistants, Denny Schuler, a longtime aide in the Pac-10, reportedly called Tormey “the best (head coach) I’ve ever been around. He does everything right.”

But he wound up with a 16-31 record for years, and Ault sacked him after a 56-3 loss to Boise State last year, naming himself as Tormey’s replacement.

Their relationship grew no cozier later. Last summer, months after Tormey’s dismissal, three Nevada players were arrested, two on drug charges and a third for armed robbery. That brought to nine the number of Wolf Pack players arrested on felony charges over a 1 1/2 -year period.

In August, Ault was quoted as saying, “Looking at this last (string of arrests), coupled with some things prior, I feel the moral fiber of this football program was in perception only.”

Ault said the arrest, “make it very clear why our program is in the fragile and unrespected position it is today.”

The remarks, of course, made their way to Tormey, who by then was coaching linebackers at Washington.

“I called him and told him what I thought about those comments,” Tormey said. “I think it was totally wrong and completely unprofessional. I believe he should take responsibility for the conduct of the players in that program nine months after I was gone. It’s his responsibility, not mine.”

In the wake of the Nevada ordeal, Tormey found the UW assistant’s job attractive, despite Gilbertson’s tenuous hold on the head-coaching spot. Tormey had assisted at the school for 11 years through 1994.