Gilbertson proves himself a loyal Husky to the end

A good soldier by any definition, Keith Gilbertson has never been reticent to do what a good soldier does – his duty.

Sixteen months ago, that meant being propped up in the most untenable coaching circumstance this side of working for George Steinbrenner or psychoanalyzing Kobe Bryant.

Monday, it meant diving on his sword.

In both instances, it was the right thing for the University of Washington, even if – no, perhaps just because – it somehow led to the dismal football events of 2004: the thrashings, the gnashings and finally smashing the whole thing to smithereens and starting all over again.

Something along those lines has been necessary ever since the day Don James decided to quit on his program in its hour of greatest need, except that bad timing, old glories and excessive hubris always kept getting in the way.

That should not be an issue now that Gilbertson has done the honorable thing and resigned as Washington’s head football coach, effective when the Apple Cup clock strikes :00.

It was announced Monday by Gilbertson and athletic director Todd Turner as a mutual decision, friendly and respectful and all. Just what was mutual about Gilby asking for a contract commitment and not getting it, and then sparing the new guy the trouble of firing him in three weeks is a mystery. But at least it was more humane than your average job separation, and for Gilby there will be the kind of financial parachute that isn’t issued to the average good soldier.

There was even a laugh or two to be had in the announcement, when Gilbertson was asked about how the team reacted to the news.

“When they stopped cheering,” he cracked, “they carried Todd out on their shoulders.”

In truth, there were a goodly number of Huskies hurt by the news, players who will now have to adapt to a third head coach in the space of 16 months, an entirely new staff, a different rebuilding mandate and the inevitable insecurity. Monday’s announcement was meant to ease their burden and Gilbertson’s, but not all of them took it that way.

“I would want to hear this after the season instead of right now,” said linebacker Joe Lobendahn. “It is kind of a flashback of what happened with the Rick Neuheisel situation.”

Of course, the Rick Neuheisel situation is why there came to be a Keith Gilbertson situation.

It was an ears-up Monday when Gilbertson revealed that, in his previous life as UW’s offensive coordinator, he had told Neuheisel after the 2002 season that “I was going to stay one more season as coordinator. I knew Cody (Pickett, the quarterback) was leaving and I figured Reggie (Williams, the dazzling wide receiver) was going to come out and I’d been with those guys and I kind of wanted to finish with those guys a year ago.”

Then the NCAA was tipped off to Neuheisel’s dalliance in an NCAA basketball Calcutta and former athletic director Barbara Hedges finally tired of his pliable relationship with the truth. Gilbertson, as the only UW staffer with head coaching experience, was drafted because, well, you don’t conduct a national search for a coach six weeks before fall camp.

But you knew the arrangement was doomed – one, because Toxic Rick’s program was already going into the tank and, two, because until some legalities were worked out, Gilbertson had to endure the indignity of being called the program’s “manager” for several weeks. And then there was the circus of the 2003 season itself, when Gilby would be game-planning against the next opponent one minute and getting hauled off to give a deposition the next.

“It became apparent to me, probably even as early as the first day that I took this job, that if we didn’t get any kind of long-term commitment, that I was probably going to be the interim coach here,” he said.

So why take it?

“It would have been easy to say no,” he admitted, “and just go about my business. I had other opportunities to go places. But that would have been doing the opposite of what we always tell our kids, which is to step up and take a shot, do the best you can do. And coaches are kind of like pioneers or astronauts, anyway – there isn’t a thing we don’t think we can do, anything we can’t handle, no problem we can’t overcome. We’re idiots like that.”

But he wasn’t a blind idiot. Twice he pushed Turner for a new contract and was denied – before this season, when Turner hadn’t been on board long enough to be comfortable with such a call, and just recently, when football’s breakdance in the quicksand made it impossible to justify.

“If they weren’t going to make a commitment to me, that was fine,” Gilbertson said. “As long as they make a commitment to football on this campus, I’m OK with that.”

Turner insists UW will do exactly that – he’s the A.D., what else did you expect him to say? But in fact, he’s seen it as a priority from the day he stepped on campus. Maybe it’s his SEC background or maybe the right Tyees got his ear, but Turner understands that football doesn’t simply have to drive the car at Montlake, but that it is the car. Maybe the other sports don’t have to be left for dead as Mike Lude operated in the 1980s, but neither can football be put on auto pilot either. Attention must be paid. Ugly circumstances demanded Gilbertson and Jim Lambright get their chances to be head coach, but Hedges simply flubbed her homework in hiring Neuheisel.

“So many things have happened to us in the last 11 years since Don James felt as though he was not backed by the university,” Gilbertson said. “God bless Marcus Tuiasosopo and that group of kids who gave us the chance to go back to the Rose Bowl in 2001. Since then it has kind of been one mishap after another after another.”

Included in that is this year’s 1-7 fiasco, which Gilbertson takes as a personal failure. But surely it took a cosmic conspiracy to lay the Huskies this low, and some of that is the way Gilbertson himself was sandbagged from the start.

And yet he contends he has “no problem selling this university” – to reluctant recruits or prospective successors.

That, truly, is a good soldier, and every school needs those.

It’s just, at the moment, Washington needs a general worse.