UW Coach Comparison: Graham Comes Late to Coaching Party

The running-backs leader has spent most of his career in sports administration.

Scottie Graham, left, heads up the Husky running backs. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Scottie Graham is 55, seven years older than Jedd Fisch. He's been a running-backs coach for just four seasons.

Huh?

Most coaches his age tend to wind down their careers, not launch them.

Yet Graham chose to experience a wide variety of professional options before pulling on one of his trademark headbands, dealing with recruits nearly 40 years younger than him and turning to college coaching rather late in life, first at Arizona and now Washington.

The pathway to a coaching position for this New York native began like this: Graham turned up. in the Big Ten as a three-year starting running back for Ohio State, a 1,704-yard, 19-touchdown career rusher and the Buckeyes team captain as a senior.

This man is so old in football years he was drafted in the seventh round of the 1992 NFL draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers, as the 188th player chosen -- 187 slots behind Steve Emtman, the fearsome and ancient Washington Husky defensive tackle who went first overall to the Indianapolis Colts.

Graham played six NFL seasons for the New York Jets, Minnesota Vikings and the Cincinnati Bengals, rushing for 139 and 166 yards in consecutive games for the playoff-bound Vikings.

After retiring from the pro game, he spent 15 years working with the NFL Players Association in Washington, D.C., in multiple roles, alwaya for the betterment of the athlete.

For seven years, Graham served as a senior associate athletic director for Arizona State, in charge of student-athlete development and welfare, again promoting the players however he could.

Coaching?

"Being an administrator, I got to find out what a bad coach was," Graham said. "Kids would come and talk to me all the time and I didn't want to be that guy. I wanted to be some guy they wanted to come visit and they wanted to learn from."

Graham knew someone who knew Jedd Fisch, who doesn't seem shy about doing the unconventional if it produces results, and the latter hired the former and brought him to Arizona and then to the UW.

This late-bloomer coach replaced Lee Marks, who supervised the Husky running backs for Kalen DeBoer and is now at Memphis. With his previous FBS stops at the UW, Fresno State and Boise State, Marks is in his 10th season as a coach on that level, which is more than double Graham's experience. He's also credited with helping turn Mississippi State's Dillon Johnson and Virginia's Wayne Taulapapa into much better backs at the UW.

Yet Graham has the enthusiasm of a guy still competing for the starting job at Ohio State and he likes to banter. There's still a lot of football life left in him.

"I'm young.," he told a reporter this spring. "You referred to me as an old man. I ran nine miles this week."

Minnesota Vikings running back Scottie Graham, now a UW assistant, runs the ball in the 1993 NFC Wild Card playoff game against the New York Giants. / RVR Photos-USA TODAY Sports

Certainly he gives his players a window into what's possible, of how they might turn out down the line, of exactly who they'll resemble as middle-aged men.

For instance, UW running back Jonah Coleman, who played for Graham at Arizona, could very well look at his coach and see himself in 35 years. He carries a stocky 5-foot-9, 229-pound frame. Graham played at 5-foot-9 and 217 pounds. Both are confident individuals. Mirror images, in fact.

Scottie Graham puts his Husky running backs through a spring drill. / Skylar Lin Visuals

While Graham doesn't have nearly the years of service that Marks has, he might be considered a coaching upgrade because of his Ohio State and NFL careers, his players association experience and his time spent in the ASU athletic department. He's not shy about who he is either.

"Coach Fisch gave me my first opportunity," Graham said, "and it's worked out well for both of us."

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