Washington in the LA Bowl? Why not embrace it?

Jedd Fisch seems to be.

SEATTLE — I don’t care that you don’t care.

I’m considering pinning that message to the top of my Twitter page, such has been the nature of much unsolicited feedback responding to Washington’s selection to play in Saturday’s LA Bowl against Boise State (though not necessarily from the fine patrons of this newsletter).

And I do get it: this is not the most alluring bowl, nor the most enticing matchup, especially considering UW’s general familiarity with the Broncos. Even the date is mostly unfortunate, considering how many more practices the Huskies would have held before a typical late-December game.

It’s even possible that some of you have never so much as ingested any Bucked Up pre-workout supplements, nor sampled their creatine (though I’d wager you’ve heard of Rob Gronkowski).

Blame the general success of the Pac-12’s legacy schools for Washington’s rotten draw, should you deem it so. Oregon is in the College Football Playoff. Utah won 10 games; USC and Arizona each won nine. The Huskies played in the Sun Bowl last year, so eight-win Arizona State was bound for El Paso, and that left the LA Bowl to grab an eight-win team from the Big Ten.

Last year’s Pac-12 rep, California, brought a 6-6 record to Los Angeles. The league’s prior three entrants all arrived 7-5.

Had they just beaten Wisconsin, the Huskies would likely be preparing for the Holiday Bowl on Jan. 2.

It’s like Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln or Albert Einstein might have once said: you get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.

Lacking interest or not — and, sorry, but I still believe that come 5 p.m. Saturday, even the performatively disinterested will release a heavy sigh, then click over to ABC to watch Gronk shotgun the ceremonial first beer or whatever — Washington coach Jedd Fisch made clear his program will always choose to play football, when given the opportunity.

Not that it ever really occurred to anyone that the Huskies wouldn’t. But after Notre Dame decided it was College Football Playoff or bust, and Kansas State, Iowa State and Baylor all passed on the LA Bowls in their own lives, several other coaches have seized the opportunity to let everyone know they actually like playing this game, thank you very much.

“These bowl games are special. I don’t understand the opt-outs of them,” Fisch said Monday. “I listened to Clark Lea at Vanderbilt talk about what an amazing experience playing in a bowl game is, and how they love football over there, and they never want to opt out, and I couldn’t agree more with that same exact philosophy.”

No doubt, the expanded CFP has rendered the sport’s remaining postseason largely irrelevant. But not entirely so. Last year, the 6-6 Huskies — fortunate to be playing in the Sun Bowl, by the way, with a mere .500 record — used their supposedly meaningless season finale as a proving ground for a dynamic freshman quarterback. Demond Williams Jr.’s fourth-quarter wizardry, even in defeat, at least provided social-media inventory to help bridge the empty months of January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August.

For those scoring at home, that’s (nearly) eight months without any college football games. Come mid-March, you’d kill for an LA Bowl.

The fact is, the Huskies are what they are — an 8-4 team, trending positively enough — and so they are playing, roughly, in the game they deserve. They’re also playing against a three-time defending conference champion — even if Washington should have a size and speed advantage at most positions and is unsurprisingly favored by 8.5 points — and with a roster full of young players who, like Williams last year, can use all the reps they get. And with a 5 p.m. kickoff on ABC — Dave Pasch heads the broadcast crew, and you’ve probably heard of him, too — the Huskies should be able to pick up at least a handful of casual viewers eager for that sweet, sweet run of impending holiday football inventory.

Poo-poo the whole arrangement if you’d like. I can admit, broadly, to being inclined toward similar cynicism myself. If you’re reading this, though, I’m guessing you like college football, and that you certainly like the Washington Huskies. If that’s the case, shouldn’t you relish the chance to watch them play one more game before entering that interminable portion of the calendar where they don’t play any?

The fact that it’s just the LA Bowl, and that the game is played so early, and that it’s against a Mountain West opponent the Huskies have seen repeatedly over the past 20 years?

Who cares?

It is always possible, of course, that certain players might opt out of the game for varying reasons. If that’s going to happen, Fisch doesn’t know about it yet.

“I have not heard about anyone not going, and I have not heard anybody at this point in time talking about opting out of the game itself,” he said. “But we’ll see. It’s 2025, so anything can happen.”

I asked Fisch how Jonah Coleman and Denzel Boston came out of the Oregon game. Coleman was limited by a knee injury sustained at Wisconsin, while Boston was playing through an ankle injury from the same game.

“They’re both playing,” Fisch said. “They’re both good to go, healthier than they’ve been before Oregon.”

On Tuesday, Fisch will accompany Coleman to Las Vegas, where the senior will be honored as one of 16 finalists for the Campbell Trophy, known colloquially as college football’s “Academic Heisman.” Coleman is one of two finalists from the Big Ten, and one of six from a Power 4 school. Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe won the award last year.

Fisch said he’ll make the trip with his wife, plus running backs coach Scottie Graham and his wife, and athletic director Pat Chun and his wife. They’ll travel back early Wednesday morning before a final team practice in Seattle, then an evening flight to Los Angeles, where the team will conclude its bowl prep on Thursday and Friday.

With a year of eligibility remaining, Boston has a decision to make: return as a seasoned veteran and Washington’s top receiver (again), or pursue first-round status in the NFL Draft.

He’s still awaiting feedback from the NFL’s college advisory committee, Fisch said. Agents have also weighed in, as has Fisch with feedback from his own NFL contacts. “We’re kind of laying it all out there,” Fisch said, “and we’re saying, ‘let’s look at all the pros, and let’s look at all the cons.’”

He continued “I believe, personally, if you can play college football, you should play college football. That’s my belief. I believe the more you play, the more film you have. The more film you have, the more people see you in a positive light. The more people see you in a positive light, the higher you get picked.

“That doesn’t work for everybody. That’s not necessarily needed for everybody. I just want Denzel to make whatever the best decision is for him, and our program will benefit from that decision one way or another. If Denzel leaves, then we know we’re going to have a very high draft-pick player that just left our program. If Denzel stays, we know we’ll have a future very high-draft pick player that’s playing wide receiver for us.”

We know the downside of playing a bowl game so early. I asked Fisch if there are any advantages. He pointed to the fact that Washington will reconvene for winter workouts Jan. 4, with winter quarter beginning the following day.

“If we played the Holiday Bowl on Jan. 2, our players would have a one-day break,” he said. “I think that’s really hard in college football, to have our coaches and our players work every day, all day, and then have a one-day break. So for that, I do think there’s some value in playing a little earlier.”

Fisch figures the Huskies will have about eight fewer practices than if they were playing in one of the other Pac-12-affiliated bowl games, and he doesn’t love that. With national signing day moved up to the first week of December the past two seasons, coaches are no longer on the road this month, which at least allowed the Huskies to practice some last week.

He also believes the team should look forward to playing at SoFi Stadium, home of the Rams and Chargers.

“If you can’t appreciate and get excited about the fact that you’re walking on the same field that Justin Herbert’s walking on, that Jalen Hurts is walking on, that Matthew Stafford’s walking on … then you’re missing the opportunity of doing something super cool,” Fisch said.

Unrelated to my question, Fisch made clear it’s never a bad thing for the Huskies to play a game in Los Angeles, even if the current recruiting dead period doesn’t allow for any contact with prospects.

“I’m hopeful the fact we’re playing in L.A. will really help us market our program even more,” he said.

John Mills is a Freshman All-America pick by On3.

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