Shephard's Season-Long Message to Huskies Has Nice Ring to It

The receivers coach tells it like only he can relay it.

As the University of Washington football team has navigated 13 football games without a setback, the coaches and players all speak a similar language meant to inspire.

They repeatedly talk of unfinished business or flatly declare, "The job isn't done."

Then, of course, there is JaMarcus Shephard, who's forever been guided by his own dialect, which tends to lean to something a little stronger than what everyone else has to offer.

Asked earlier in the season about turning the Huskies from good to great, Shephard didn't hold back.

"You all ain't won nothing, that's been the message," the UW receivers coach said, his voice rising. "You ain't won nothing."

Well now.

An animated Shephard proceeded to ask the reporters surrounding him that day if they had any championship rings?

A Pac-12 title ring?

A CFP ring?

"We didn't go to the CFP," Shephard reminded his audience. We didn't do those things. Our goals are still out there. That's enough motivation in the minds for our players to push this thing into greatness."

Demonstrating his grasp of Husky history, Shephard brought up the 1990 Don James football team that went 10-2 and beat Iowa in the Rose Bowl to make a point.

"It wasn't good enough," he said.

Shephard mentioned how the Huskies that followed back then came up with the mantra "Hungrier than ever," lived it go 12-0 and won a national championship. 

"Those guys were hungrier than ever," he said. "I think I have a pin that says that."

Shephard, with this current UW team coming off an 11-2 season, said similarities persist with the Huskies of 1991 that won a national championship in the Coaches' Poll. His guys recently won a Pac-12 title, but that's not nearly enough.

If they get a ring from beating Oregon in Las Vegas, there's another one out there that's bigger and better.

"It's really the same mantra for our team — they should be hungrier than ever, because they didn't win anything last year," he said. "They didn't win nothin'." 

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