Rose Bowl Lambright’s Biggest Issue

Some of the traumas that muddy up a college football program don’t survive the spin cycle.

For instance:

Shane Fortney was elsewhere Monday, possibly shopping his quarterbacking skills and short-term availability to schools either needy or nervous. Jim Lambright, meanwhile, was in the pro shop at Manito shopping for clean socks - lest he have to play his next 18 holes with the boosters bare-ankled.

With all its unpredictable rancors, life goes on. The topic du jour at the University of Washington is how the Huskies expect to play in the Rose Bowl come New Year’s and not the dubious handling of what, until a few weeks ago, had been a good soldier.

But a small stain has set in Lambright’s purple and gold, though he himself may never quite see it.

And, of course, if his Huskies do as they’re supposed to this fall, the boosters will buy him a whole new wardrobe - stainless, right down to the socks.

“We’re not all the way back,” cautioned Lambright during the Huskies coaches’ golf stop in Spokane on Monday.

“We’re not where we were in the early ‘90s with the depth and experience to contend for the national championship - to where if you lose a starter, you don’t lose a game. That is noticeably not there yet.”

Most especially not at quarterback, where a barely used sophomore and two incoming freshmen will back up Brock Huard.

It was two weeks into spring ball when Fortney decided he wasn’t getting a fair shake to win back the quarterback job he had lost by injury default to Huard last fall. The timing guaranteed it wouldn’t be a happy - or even a quiet - parting. And, sure enough, when Lambright questioned the player’s character for leaving, Fortney questioned the coach’s integrity for bullying him into delaying some necessary surgery until the end of the season.

Tequila!

This episode and Lambright’s brazen insensitivity to an individual athlete’s welfare is bound to come up in some future recruit’s living room, and should. The modern player may - but probably not - be satisfied with the explanation that what was demanded of Fortney was no more than Lambright, in his life of service to UW, would have demanded of himself.

It’s part of the man’s charm, this naked devotion and its sometimes clumsy application.

His regret in the Fortney affair, for example, is that he “would love to have had a chance to talk him out of the decision, but he and his father were set in their minds.”

Possibly because they were familiar with his methods of persuasion?

And yet at the root of Lambright’s ire was nothing more than an old-fashioned virtue that, sadly, doesn’t translate to this era when colleges are making millions off the sweat of their amateur gladiators - who in turn are trying to position themselves for some kind of payoff when the scholarship runs out.

Lambright’s analogy was the Mark Brunell-Billy Joe Hobert chapter of Huskies football - when a rehabbing Brunell bided his time for a second chance.

“He could have decided, ‘I don’t want to compete against Billy Joe,’ and transferred,” Lambright said of Brunell, “and if he had, we wouldn’t have won the Pac-10 the year after we won the national championship.

“If you have a good chance of being favored in the conference, that has to be what your senior leadership is living for - for the opportunity to create something special for the team. To me, it’s a cardinal sin to quit on your team when they’re counting on you as a senior.”

Fortney would counter that he was looking out for his team when he wanted to have surgery in mid-season, the better to be ready for his senior year. But at that moment, Lambright was adamant that junior sacrifice was more important than senior leadership.

All bile under the bridge now.

For the demented (but, disturbingly, growing) fringe element of Huskydom that still thinks Don James could be persuaded to come back if only the Pac-10 would say it’s sorry, the Fortney business is a convenient black mark against Lambright. The major one, of course, is that their time shares in Pasadena have gone unused for four holidays now.

Never mind that he has never been worse than 7-4-1 even while losing 20 scholarships to NCAA sanctions, and never worse than second in the Pac-10 since the handcuffs came off. To the hard to satisfy, his teams haven’t won enough big ones, haven’t beaten the Cougars badly enough, haven’t been a factor in their bowl games.

Now, with 16 starters returning - including a marquee quarterback and a 1,000-yard tailback - even the coach isn’t into mitigation.

“This team is going to be good enough to be favored to win the conference,” he said.

And what about the coach?

“I don’t think you grade yourself until it’s all over,” Lambright said. “When I’m done coaching, however the end comes, then I’ll get a grade. Right now, you cross your fingers and hope like mad that everybody’s eligible, that things are going fine academically and you don’t get any tragic calls.”

And that it all comes out in the wash.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review