UW’s Chris Petersen shifts position on ESPN vote

Washington head coach Chris Petersen claims he doesn’t remember answering an ESPN poll by Brett McMurphy. In that survey Petersen was mentioned by McMurphy as among 30 coaches within the 65 Power 5 conference teams expressing the agreement that the P5 teams should only play each other and leave out games with the so called G5 teams.

Petersen’s vote caused quite a stir among Mountain West fans and Boise State fans in particular. He vote was reported on widely, including here on the Mountain West Connection. The impression reported in the media was that he had already forgotten the program that made him a football legend. There seemed to be a callous disregard of teams such as Boise State who have recently won games against teams like Washington, Oregon, Oklahoma, Virginia Tech and Georgia. The poll put Petersen’s vote in the same camp with the likes of Nick Saban and others who wish to exclude scheduling outside of the P5 leagues.

Not so fast, says Chris Petersen now. He argues he was "misrepresented" and states that teams like Boise State have every right to play against top tier college football programs.

"First of all, I don’t even know when I answered that question," Petersen told reporters in Seattle. "I had a lot of questions coming at me and I didn’t really know exactly what it meant. I think we are trying to get some parity in terms of scheduling in terms of the league games that we play so we are all on the same footing there. I think a Boise State, I don’t know if they are in a quote power conference, but they are a power team. So I’m always a Boise State fan and I wouldn’t do anything to keep those guys, so called, out of the mix."

Washington is scheduled to play both Boise State and Utah State in September 2015.

"I’ve been in that conference forever and I know the players and coaches that are in there so there’s no question that we’d wanna play those guys and I know they wanna play us. There’s good players and that’s great competition."