REPORT: Former Arizona football Coach Jedd Fisch discusses his choice to leave Wildcats for Washington

On January 14, a little more than two weeks after leading Arizona to a 10-3 season-ending 38-24 victory over Oklahoma in the Alamo Bowl, Fisch was hired by Washington. As many as sixteen starters were expected to return, and the Wildcats, who placed 11th in the final AP poll, were thought to be among the favorites to win the Big 12 in 2024 and earn a position in the expanded 12-team playoff.

“I was fully committed to it. Then an opportunity came to join the Big Ten and coach for the national championship runner-up,” Fisch said. “It was an opportunity I had to say yes to. And I wanted to say yes, I want to be clear on that. I wanted to say yes when Washington called. If they didn’t call, then we would be sitting here talking about what a great spring we’d be having in Arizona.”

After Kalen DeBoer left for Tuscaloosa, Nick Saban’s retirement from Alabama set off a chain reaction that left Washington without a head coach.

Fisch claimed that on Saturday, January 13, he received a call from Washington “to gauge my interest,” but that no offer was made. That was later that evening, and then on Sunday morning documents were sent over, and in the afternoon, Troy Dannen, the athletic director for the University of Washington, showed up at Fisch’s home.

“He flew here because he wanted to secure me going up to Washington,” Fisch said “And you know, I wanted to secure me going up to Washington. So that’s why I signed the contract.”

Fisch told Wasserman that the main reasons he decided to leave the UA were the fact that he had not yet received an extension and the amount of money Washington was going to provide for his assistants: “my assistant coach pool (at Arizona) would still have been $3.5 million less than what it is now.”

As for his contract, Fisch said it “didn’t get approved by the Arizona Board of Regents” because it needed to be “fully alumni-supported and alumni-backed,” an insinuation that not enough UA athletic boosters were on board.

“There was supposed to be promissory notes signed and 70 percent of them were signed, 30 percent were not,” he said. “So there wasn’t any way to get my contract passed in the Board of Regents until at least February, and we had to make a decision.”

Fisch also talked about the three-minute team meeting he had with the Arizona players following his hiring in Washington. He claimed he didn’t choose that.

“The team meeting was not my choice,” Fisch said. “The team meeting was absolutely dictated to me from administration and really from the NCAA. If you’re going to call a player meeting and let them know you’re leaving to go to another Division I program, then you can’t talk about the why. You can’t talk about really any part other than I’m going to take the University of Washington job, because otherwise, you’d be considered recruiting and tampering and trying to get people to jump in the portal. And it puts you in a really weird spot.

“So the 3-minute team meeting, I told them that I loved them. I told them I appreciated them. I told our staff that as many of them that I could bring, I would bring. That ended up bringing 21 people in our building that we were able to help provide for their families in a way that they weren’t provided for before. And we felt as if we were doing the right thing for a lot of people. And in turn, we are excited about what the University of Washington can bring.”

Additionally, Fisch has signed a number of prospects from UA, including running back Jonah Coleman and cornerback Ephesians Prysock from the 2023 squad and quarterback Demond Williams and running back Adam Mohammed from the Class of 2024. In an apparent attempt to explain why the majority of Arizona’s returning starters chose to remain in Tucson and play for new coach Brent Brennan, he told Wasserman, “I knew how many people I could take.”

Fisch also brought up the recent job at UCLA, which former running back DeShaun Foster filled on Monday. While Fisch served as UCLA’s assistant coach in 2017 and served as the team’s temporary head coach at the conclusion of the campaign, he denied any interest in the position.

“I have absolutely zero interest in the UCLA job then or now,” he said. “I just think it’s time that everyone understands our commitment at Arizona was 100 percent truthful. And we were committed to making this program great. We made our players better than they’ve ever thought they could be and we were better than anyone thought we could. We brought national attention to the program. And we’re excited about taking that exact same model and bringing that model to Seattle.”