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After being named a top target Wednesday night for the Washington job, current Boise State head coach Chris Petersen has taken the next step and now be interviewing for the open job, per ESPN's Brett McMurphy. Petersen is not the only coach to be interviewing for the job, as Alabama offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier will also get a crack at being the Huskies next head coach.
If Petersen were to go anywhere it was always likely to be a Pac-12 job, and he has plenty of interest from those schools; most recently he withdrew his name from consideration from the USC job. That may have been due to the Trojans being a high profile school with a large media market, and that could be the same reason he said no to UCLA last year.
While Washington is a big time program in the Pac-12, Seattle is not in as an intense spotlight compared to either of those Los Angels jobs.
Anthony Cassino of SB Nation's Washington blog UW Dawg Pound is not completely sold on Petersen being the right fit in Seattle:
Is It A Good Fit: On the field yes, off the field no. Petersen has done an excellent job over the course of his career of both developing talent on the field and creating systems around that talent to allow it to succeed. It would be interesting to see what he could do with UW's talent, but could he sustain the talent level long term? If he could keep Justin Wilcox in the fold -- who coached under Petersen as defensive coordinator at Boise State -- it would go a long way toward helping out in recruiting and give the fans confidence in the continued improvement on the defensive side of the ball.
Not sure what Cassino means that Petersen could not succeed off the field in recruiting. Petersen has always found decent talent and got them to extremely high places, and over the past few years has been able to snag a few three-star recruits instead of none at all.
Boise State faithful are saying that since Petersen earned a verbal commit just a few days ago, but there is a long line of precedents to sort through where coaches stay committed to their current gig up until the last moment, or sometimes they flat out lie like Nick Saban did before he left the Miami Dolphins to take the Alabama job a few years ago.
However, these two tweets offer some conflicting information, unless Petersen does not go to Seattle and the interview is in Boise or over the phone.
Can confirm that Boise State's Chris Petersen is scheduled to interview with UW on Friday.
— Adam Jude (@A_Jude) December 5, 2013
Boise State sports info tells me Pete "has been in his office today and will be here tomorrow as well. ... (Bowl) practice starts Saturday."
— Brian Murphy (@murphsturph) December 5, 2013
