Washington made its debut in the Big Ten Conference inside Lucas Oil Stadium on Thursday afternoon at Big Ten Media Days. Jedd Fisch took the main stage podium at about 12:20 pm Eastern Time and began addressing the media about his program. Fisch began by expressing his gratitude for being the head coach at Washington during its transition year to the Big Ten Conference. He then introduced the three players he brought with him to Indianapolis. Jonah Coleman, Kamren Fabiculanan, and Carson Bruener represented the Huskies at Media Days. Fisch described Washington as one of the elite programs, both athletically and academically, in the nation. This season is going to be a reboot at Washington, and the culture installation has been quick, but effective.
“Reboot” at Washington
“Washington football has beaten Oregon the last three times we played. We’ve beaten Texas the last two times we’ve played. We’ve beaten USC the last two times we’ve played.” Fisch called out the program’s success in the last two seasons during his opening statement to the media. Winning 25 of its 28 games, Washington has been among the elite college football teams since 2022.
But this season, the team is almost entirely new. It’s replacing 21 of 22 starters from last year’s National Championship roster. It has an entirely new coaching staff, training staff, strength staff, and nutrition staff. “That has never been done before, and we’re excited about that challenge,” Fisch said. The Washington head coach does not refer to it as a rebuild. Instead, he is calling it a reboot.
The Big Ten now stretches coast to coast, providing an immense opportunity for Washington to expand its brand nationally. Fisch said he plans to do just that. “We will take our great city and our great university everywhere in this country to find great players.” He wants to build one of the best recruiting staffs in the country.
“Recruiting is the lifeblood of our program, we are going to build our team based on high school athletes,” Fisch called it a developmental program where his goal is to find the best players in the country to build his roster year-in and year-out. It appears underway already, as Washington’s 2025 recruiting class is currently ranked inside the top 20 nationally, and fifth in the Big Ten.
Jedd Fisch on Installing a Culture
Relative to the college football calendar, Fisch took over at Washington late in the offseason. He accepted the job on January 14th, 12 days after the winter transfer portal closed. The coaching change caused several players to enter the transfer portal, and the new staff had to wait until the April window opened to begin re-tooling the roster. Ultimately, just 36 scholarship players remained from last year’s program. And only four of them had recorded a start in their career. There are 46 new scholarship players on this roster for the 2024 season.
Fisch said that one of the challenges of installing a culture at Washington is that these players have not played meaningful snaps together. And many of them have not played any snaps at the college level. “We had to teach them what we would expect on a daily basis,” Fisch said at the Big Ten Media Day podium. “They’ve embraced it, they’ve worked extremely hard together.”
“Our culture is a culture of belonging, it’s a culture of inclusiveness.” There are players from several different backgrounds and several different schools on this roster. Creating that inclusive environment has been the catalyst in quickly establishing a culture in Montlake. The common denominator is a group that has fun competing, and a coaching staff that understands their role in bringing players together while promoting internal competition. What Fisch described in Indianapolis describes exactly what we have seen this offseason with this team.
