The NCAA coaching carousel has just handed us our first real surprise of the season.
The Washington Huskies announced that head coach Chris Petersen will step down following the team’s bowl game. Defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake will take over as head coach, and Petersen will assume an advisory role with the program.
“I’ll be a Husky for life, but now is the right time for me to step away from my head coaching duties, and recharge,” Petersen said in the statement announcing the move.
Petersen made his name going 92-12 at Boise State before jumping to Washington, where he went 54-26 and made them nationally relevant. He posted three 10-win seasons, reaching the College Football Playoff in 2016. Petersen’s move comes on the heels of a rather underwhelming campaign that saw the team go 7-5 after being ranked No. 13 in the preseason AP poll.
Lake is a highly-touted assistant, and the fact that he was immediately handed the job is not a surprise to those in the know. The program demonstrated just how highly they thought of him with the deal they gave him a year and a half ago.
Petersen is still only 55, which is young in coaching terms. That, and the fact that he mentioned a desire to “recharge” in announcing the move, suggests he could be coaching again sooner rather than later.
Here are the terms of Lake’s new contract with Washington.
