Jim Mora Goes from UW Walk-On to College Coach Who Still Wins

The former Husky linebacker has resurrected his coaching career at UConn.

Connecticut Huskies coach Jim Mora directs the action against Temple. / David Butler II-Imagn Images

As a walk-on safety, Jim Mora was a coach's kid who showed up at the University of Washington three years after his father left the place. He endeared himself to his Husky teammates with his blunt-speaking personality and his hell-bent playing style, which led to a position switch to outside linebacker and significant game snaps in 1983 as a senior. He finished with 18 tackles, a tackle for loss and a sack.

The following season, Don James made Mora a coach, a graduate assistant for the UW's 11-1 Orange Bowl team.

Forty years later, Mora, after many successes and failures, some of them latter self-afflicted, currently is one of college football's feel-good coaching stories. He leads a different set of Huskies these days after turning Connecticut into a 7-3 bowl-eligible team with a three-game winning streak as an FBS independent.

Mora, who turned 63 on Monday, has lost none of his feistiness, letting his displeasure show a month ago after UConn lost 23-20 to Wake Forest at home and didn't get a final-series pass interference call that might have brought a different outcome. The coach's postgame reaction was direct and raw.

"I'm proud of them for fighting back," Mora said of his players. "We've got to make sure we put ourselves in a position where it doesn't come down to one play where an ACC [officiating] team makes a horse-s*** call against an independent. And that's up to us to play better at the start of the game so it doesn't come down to that which was holding and PI. And that's what I told them."

Mora, who previously has been a head coach for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and Seattle Seahawks, plus the UCLA Bruins, has righted a college football program that went through six consecutive losing seasons and no bowl appearances over that time before his arrival.

It was seven seasons ago that Mora was fired by UCLA and his offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch, now the UW leader, replaced him as interim coach with a season finale against California and a subsequent bowl game to go. More replaced Rick Neuheisel, the former Bruins quarterback and UW football coach, in Westwood. He went 2-1 against the Huskies.

More previously was supposed to be a long-term solution for the Falcons, leading them to 11-5, 8-8 and 7-9 seasons. However, he angered team ownership when, in a KJR radio interview, he told how the UW was his dream job and he would leave Atlanta if offered. He later insisted he was just joking.

His father Jim E. Mora, a Husky defensive-line coach for Don James for three seasons, would serve as the head coach for the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, compiling a 125-106 NFL record, and before that the USFL's Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars, where he was 41-12-1.

The son, Jim L. Mora, has gone from the Falcons to the Seahawks to UCLA and now to UConn, where he's been 31-33 as a pro coach and 62-49 on the college level. He's still winning football games when he can and telling everyone what he thinks without much of a filter.

Likely no UW walk-on player has gone so far in the game and this one is still walking the sideline.

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