Dave Aranda In Husky Stadium? The Baylor Coach Has Been There Before

As a young coordinator, he sent his defense up against the UW in Seattle in 2011.

As the University of Washington coaching search moves into a second week, people have tried to envision Dave Aranda, Baylor's suddenly coveted football leader, walking the sideline at Husky Stadium.

Ten years ago, Aranda did just that, at least before kickoff.

A somewhat anonymous visitor, he spent the rest of the afternoon in the press box, as the defensive coordinator for the Hawaii Rainbows, seated not far from the team's offensive coordinator, Nick Rolovich. 

Aranda wasn't a defensive genius just yet when the Huskies zinged his players for a 30-yard pass completion from Keith Price to Austin Seferian-Jenkins on the first play from scrimmage, and a 47-yarder from the same duo not long after that. 

Under brilliant sunshine, this guy's defense permitted 466 yards of total offense and lost 40-32 to a Steve Sarkisian team. Three months later, as part of Greg McMackin's staff, they were all fired.

This season, Aranda has risen to prominence faster than any other college football coach, by directing his Bears to a 9-2 record in just his second season in charge. A 27-14 upset of Oklahoma made everyone sit up and take notice of him.

Dave Aranda coached Baylor to a 27-14 upset of Oklahoma.  :: Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports

While a UW job previously held by the dismissed Jimmy Lake is widely considered a worthy landing spot, LSU has a much better chance of coaxing Aranda away from Baylor.

From 2016 to 2019, he served as the Tigers' assistant head coach, defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, as LSU's Jim Lambright, by playing an integral role in the SEC team's run to a national championship and him earning his Baylor promotion. 

As schools get in line to tempt him to leave, Aranda has all of 20 games as a head coach. He went 2-7 in his first season in Waco, forced to deal with the pandemic as a rookie coach similar to Lake.

Unlike Lake, Aranda is considered more of a laconic deep thinker rather than an overt emotional leader. 

In fact, he's been so quiet and soft-spoken in his football travels he's been nicknamed "the professor," "the defensive coordinator whisperer" and, in high school, "the fencepost."

Of Mexican-American descent, he grew up in Redlands, California, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. He injured his right shoulder so badly as a high school linebacker, requiring six surgeries, he couldn't play the college game. He took to coaching, using his cerebral approach.

He attended Cal Lutheran and became a graduate assistant coach, rooming with another school alum, Tom Herman. 

Among his several stops, he went from Hawaii to Utah State to Wisconsin, building a reputation as an attacking, blitzing coordinator, as one of the game's best defensive minds. 

In Montlake, Aranda wouldn't come cheap. At LSU, the school paid him $2.5 million in his final season, making him the nation's highest-paid assistant coach. The Baton Rouge school felt compelled to do this when SEC rival Texas A&M unapologetically did all that it could to pry him away. 

A decade later, this coach's head is probably spinning as he prepares his Big 12 squad for battle against Texas Tech on Saturday, hoping to get his team into the conference championship game, amid all of the coaching rumors squeezing him. 

Had his old colleague Rolovich not been fired at WSU last month for his vaccine reluctance, Aranda alsomight have been closely watching for an Apple Cup score coming out of Husky Stadium.

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