Puppy chow

I got into Seattle last night around 6:30 and the weather was pretty ugly. Hopefully it lightens up a bit by game time or we are going to have two teams that can't run the ball slogging around all day in a lack of power fest.

November is a time that warm weather teams hate to visit Seattle because they often take one look at the wet sky and go out and immediately under perform. Witness last years home games against USC and California. The Trojans barely escaped and the Bears were not so lucky after UW went with a power running game. The worse the weather is the better I like the chances for Washington on Saturday.

I read in this morning's Bob Condotta column that Willingham has been given permission to continue recruiting and working on kids with offers or who have verbaled. You would have thought they would have had that worked out a couple of weeks ago. Maybe Ty will be able to contact QB Keith Price to give him an update.

Woodward said the school will make no new offers until a new coaching staff is in place. But he wants the current staff to continue to recruit the players who do have offers.

"We know it's difficult at this time without a head coach," Woodward said.

He said he told Willingham and recruiting coordinator Chris Tormey "to recruit hard and to continue to work on [those who have commitments] and the others that are out there on our target list to keep an open mind [about] the University of Washington."

We wanted to take in the Husky basketball game last night but the traffic made that impossible. From what we are hearing "IT" is the real thing. The highlights we saw on TV last night showed some very fancy passing and shooting by the Dawgs. I get the feeling the Dawgs are going to be very solid this season and compete for the Pac Ten title. They did give up 89 points to Western so they are going to need to turn it up on defense once the real season begins.

The 5-foot-8 freshman guard led the Huskies to an easy 105-85 exhibition men's basketball victory over Western Washington, scoring a game-high 27 points, hitting 9 of 12 shots — including 8 of 8 inside the three-point line — and 8 of 12 free throws.

Art Thiel of the Seattle PI brings us back to the days when Barbara Hedges kicked off the inflation in college football coaching salaries.

In January 1999, the Huskies unhinged the college football world's jaw when they gave Rick Neuheisel, a coach that hadn't won as much as a conference championship, a deal that provided $1 million a year. A few weeks earlier, UCLA thought it had done something brave when it extended Bob Toledo's contract to $578,000.

 Look for UW to pay between $2.5 to $3 million per year for the right football coach.

Molly Yanity of the Seattle PI spoke with Woodward last night at the game. the Huskies want to have a new coach in place no later than mid December.

"We could play cat-and-mouse with this for a long time, but I can't say anything that would tip my hand," Woodward said Thursday. "The secrecy of this is vital, so we're not scaring off someone we could talk to."