The Road to 1991 Perfection: The Huskies Made a Vow After Near-Miss
The 1990 University of Washington football team was really good. In fact, it was national championship worthy. Everybody knew it.
These guys beat USC by 31 points, Arizona State by 28, Oregon by 21, Stanford by 36, California by 39 and Arizona by 44, and upended Iowa 46-34 in a Rose Bowl game that was hardly as close as that final score.
Yet the second-ranked Huskies frittered away a huge opportunity at a national championship in Week 10 by getting upset by a sub-.500 and heavy underdog UCLA team, losing 25-22 at home before 71,925 disbelieving fans.
They'd lost 20-14 to Colorado early in the year, to a 20th-ranked opponent on the road. Nothing disrespectful there. The UCLA game was different. It was a huge letdown.
That face-plant became the lynchpin for 1991.
"The seniors all got together and said, 'What we did last year was unacceptable; 10-2, for us, was unacceptable,' " starting wide receiver Orlando McKay said. "We felt like we should have won the (national) title that year."
This is the third in a series of articles and videos that will replay the UW's 1991 national championship season, which is the apex of Husky football, beginning now. We don't have a 2020 season, so we'll use '91 as a conversation piece.
McKay, now a teacher and an assistant football and head track coach at private Memphis University School in Memphis, Tennessee, and the other upper-classmen got very specific about what needed to be done between seasons.
They made a vow.
"We robbed ourselves by not preparing for the UCLA game, for not taking them serious, because we thought they were garbage," McKay said. "They weren't; they were a good team. We didn't prepare ourselves. The seniors said we were going to over-prepare. We're going to prepare more than we have to."
They came up with a slogan — HTE.
Hungrier Than Ever.
They pushed each other throughout the offseason to maintain an edge. It wasn't easy. It was maniacal. It would be rewarding.
"We said we would accept nothing less than 12-0," McKay said. "That was the plan from day one. We literally killed ourselves in the offseason to get better at every position."