All throughout ESPN blog land today, we're looking at teams that could be on the rise in the next three years.
We're optimists here on the Pac-12 blog. We like to think that even if a team is down, it won't stay down for long. Picking a team from the north makes the most sense right now. As Oregon comes back to earth (maybe?) in the post-Marcus Mariota era and Stanford retools, in the next three seasons, a window of opportunity might jump out for some other team to sit atop the division.
Why not a south team? Because the south is a mess right now, with five of six teams in the division scratching and clawing their way into the top 25 and slugging it out for the division title. There's a reason we've had three different south champs in three years. Our magic eight ball started laughing when we asked it which south team could emerge over the next three years, so we're leaving that alone.
However, the Pac-12 blog thinks Washington has a chance to be regularly challenging for the north in three years. The Huskies aren't a team that's "down" right now, per se; they won nine games in 2013 and eight games the past season. But 2015 isn't shaping up swimmingly for them, and there's a very real possibility this upcoming season will be a tough one for the Huskies. With massive talent drain on defense and a lot of questions surrounding the offense, most feel this won't be Washington's breakout season.
What about 2016 and 2017? As coach Chris Petersen -- cough, the only two-time Bear Bryant winner, cough -- continues to comb the country for "OKGs" (Our Kinda Guys), it's more likely than not that folks in Seattle will begin to understand why he became the fastest active FBS coach to reach 100 career victories.
Petersen inherited a stellar defense in 2014, but he didn't have much to work with offensively as he took over a team replacing a three-year starting quarterback, the Mackey Award winner and a Doak Walker finalist. I don't care if you're Bear Bryant incarnate, that's a tough situation to walk into, regardless of what team you coach. Scoring in the league keeps increasing every year, and you're either keeping up or falling behind.
The Huskies will likely take their lumps in 2015 as they retool on both sides of the ball. But eventually, Jake Browning will take over at quarterback. Eventually, the Washington coaching staff will have a roster full of guys it recruited to fit its system and will be able to build the offense around the talented, four-star athlete.
Washington is a program with a strong history, A-list facilities and an A-list head coach. Recruiting isn't going to be a problem.
Petersen isn't a passing fancy where you give him three years and move on to the next guy. For years, he was the great white buffalo of college coaching. When other schools called, he politely declined. He chose Washington as much as Washington chose him. There had to have been a reason.
With enough time and enough patience to work his process, he believes he can do something special in Seattle. Patience isn't always a virtue with college football fans, and UW fans tend to be squirmier than most (yes, 11 straight years -- we know).
But if Petersen believes he can build Washington into a contender, given his track record, it's hard to disagree.