End of Football Season FanPulse Results

It has been a long time since the Huskies showed up in the FanPulse Top 25 and we’ll have to wait probably until September of 2020 to potentially see them show up once again. Washington did not make the list nor was it in the 5 teams next in the others receiving votes category.

As far as Pac-12 schools only Oregon (#11) and Utah (#13) ended up in the final rankings while Cal effectively finished 28th. The ranking for Oregon is particularly surprising since they finished 5th in both the final AP and Coaches poll. It appears that college football fans in general either decided to massively snub the Pac-12 or else weren’t impressed by a Rose Bowl victory that was fueled largely by turnovers. Washington fans actually had Oregon higher than the general public at 9th. Oregon fans had themselves 5th.

More relevant for Husky fans are the confidence ratings in how fans responded to the question about their confidence in the direction of the program.

(Since the exact #’s are hard to tell in the chart: 1- 100%, 2- 72.5%, 3- 90.9%, 4- 94.6%, 5- 94.1%, 6- 50%, 7- 78.1%, 78- 47.6%, 9- 60%, 10- 37.5%, 11- 68%, 12- 77.8%, 13- 29.4%, 14- 62.5%, 15- 68.4%, 16- 94%).

As you can see it has been somewhat of a wild ride. Asking fans on Sunday morning after a Saturday loss whether they still have confidence in the program results in some significant drops. The 5 times when the number slid corresponded with the week immediately following each of Washington’s 5 losses. Unsurprisingly the road defeat at Colorado which dropped the Dawgs to 6-5 was the nadir at just under 30%. If you had given fans truth serum at that point in time the total is probably greater than 30% but there is likely some amount of selection bias that the fans who filled out the poll were the ones who were most upset and wanted some way to voice their displeasure.

It’s somewhat interesting that the final total of 94% is at essentially the same place as fans were following the victory over USC which put the Dawgs at 4-1. Even after one of the winningest coaches in modern college football resigned and was replaced by a first year head coach. The combination of Lake’s likability, the blowout win over Boise State, and being a month removed from a loss helped smooth over feelings from the raw emotions many fans felt watching the team go scoreless in the first half in Boulder.

In addition to the football confidence rankings there were also basketball confidence rankings and you would think this was not exactly the best week for that after the star point guard was ruled academically ineligible and the offense looked broken in a pair of close road losses.

(1- 81.3%, 2- 96%, 3- 94.1%, 3- 94.1%, 4- 95.8%, 5- 83.3%, 6- 94%).

I don’t quite know what to make of the results. If the football program had had a week like the basketball program just did they might very well hit 0%. Are UW basketball fans just that much less controlled by their emotions than UW football fans? Does the flow and length of the basketball season mean that the most recent game is that much less important than in football? With a pair of home games coming up against the Oregon schools we’ll see if the team can rally and put up a fight with the fans at Hec-Ed supporting them.