Inside The Huskies

Big Sky Primer for Jedd Fisch's Husky Football Team

It was just three years ago that the UW got beat at home by Montana.

Dan Raley

Montana Grizzlies head coach Bobby Hauck celebrates a 13-7 victory over the Huskies at Husky Stadium in 2021.
Montana Grizzlies head coach Bobby Hauck celebrates a 13-7 victory over the Huskies at Husky Stadium in 2021. / Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

The University of Washington football team has moved up in the world, presenting itself as a full-fledged member of the Big Ten Conference, but it hasn't gotten too big that it won't deal with the Big Sky anymore.

On Saturday night, the Huskies will open a new season against Weber State, a charter member of the Big Sky since 1963 and a first-time UW opponent. It likely won't be a close game, but it will serve a purpose as a test run for coach Jedd Fisch and a gate-receipts bonanza for the FCS visitors from Ogden, Utah.

The UW will play this one with possibly as many as three Big Sky transfers in the starting lineup in former Montana State defensive tackle Sebastian Valdez, Sacramento State safety Cameron Broussard and Portland State center D'Angalo Titialii, plus a fourth, Sacramento State edge rusher Deshawn Lynch, who likely will receive plenty of game time coming off the bench.

Broussard was a first-team All-Big Sky selection in 2023 and Valdez a second-teamer last season who was named to the first team in 2022.

The Huskies have been a lot of places since 2021, having played for the CFP national championship against Michigan, won a pair of bowl games over Texas and captured the final Pac-12 championship game against Oregon, yet they're still just three seasons removed from what's considered the program's all-time low point -- a 13-7 loss to Montana when they were the nation's 20th-ranked team, which has been their only defeat to a Big Sky and an FSC member since those two organizations were formed.

Cornerback Jordan Perryman, who transferred from the Big Sky's UC Davis to the Huskies a year later, remembered how surprised he was when hearing the Grizzlies had shocked Jimmy Lake's team in Seattle, but proud for the underdog just the same.

"I was really excited for them," Perryman said. "They came out and proved themselves."

Seven players remain on the UW roster who played in that fateful game in wide receiver Giles Jackson and safety Kamren Fabiculanan, who started, and running back Cam Davis, linebacker Carson Bruener, linebacker Drew Fowler, edge rusher Voi Tunuufi and defensive tackle Jacob Bandes, who all came off the bench that day.

Jackson, Fabiculanan and Bruener are listed in the Husky starting lineup for the Weber State game.

Of the Big Sky newcomers now in Montlake, Valdez previously faced Weber State three times, winning 13-7, 43-38 and 40-0; Titialii has played against the Wildcats twice, winning 38-18 and losing 42-7; and Broussard and Lynch shared in a 33-30 win over Weber State.

The Huskies' loss to Montana three years ago was an anomaly, an outcome that ruined an entire season, helped bring down Lake's coaching staff and reminded everyone how fragile college football can be. The UW had three future NFL first-round picks on the roster at the time.

Fisch knows all about this sort of disaster. Two weeks after the UW was upended by opportunisitc Montana, Fisch, in his third game as a college head coach at Arizona, got beat by the Big Sky's Northern Arizona 21-19 in Tucson.

"There are no more gimmes in this sport, especially with all the transitions and all the turnovers and all the changes," he said of Weber State. "They have 10 transfers on their team, eight of which came from the FBS. You would have never had that back in the day."

The Huskies enter this weekend's football game with a collective 60-4-3 record against the teams that now comprise the Big Sky, which has been around six decades. They've faced just six of the 12 members in Idaho (36-2-2), Montana (16-2-1), Eastern Washington (3-0), Portland State (3-0), Sacramento State (1-0) and Idaho State (1-0). They've never played Weber State, Montana State, Cal Poly, Northern Arizona, Northern Colorado or UC Davis.

Again, an upset of the UW by a Big Sky team seems highly unlikely this coming weekend. Virtually impossible. It's just not going to happen. Montana already has used up the 100-year quota. Right?

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley

DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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