Lake puts his career on the line with emotional outburst

This season, Power 5 schools impatiently have fired coaches at USC, LSU, Texas Tech and TCU for failing to win enough.

Lake is guilty of the same, with his team falling to 4-5, plus now he's given the UW a black eye for his heavy-handed actions with his player. 

Don't be surprised if the school parts ways with him over this serious offense. After all, Don James or Chris Petersen never lost control like this. No Husky coach over the past 50 years has been accused of something like this. 

However, it's much more likely that Lake comes out on Sunday and offers a public apology for what he did, though following the 26-16 defeat to Oregon he strongly denied that he had accosted Fuavai. 

"I separated them," he insisted defiantly. "I didn't strike him."

Yet the video footage does not lie. 

Lake won't get fired right away because there's no one on his staff even remotely qualified to be an interim coach.

That doesn't mean he'll survive the month. 

Lake simply hasn't worked out since he was promoted as the UW defensive coordinator to replace the retiring Petersen following the 2019 Apple Cup.

He made bad hires, foremost offensive coordinator John Donovan, who's failed to supply the Huskies with any extended offensive success at all. Donovan won't be back next season.

Lake leads by emotion rather than discipline and it shows in his team. The small details escape him. 

The Huskies drew a delay-of-game penalty on the first play against Michigan. They had a punt blocked on the first series at Oregon State. Within three first-quarter plays against Oregon, safety Dominique Hampton and edge rusher Jordan Lolohea drew late-hit penalties. Even following Saturday's game, his players were squabbling with Ducks players during what should have been handshakes and well wishes, and had to be separated by security personnel.

Don't forget, the Huskies opened the season by losing to Montana, an FCS school, possibly the worst defeat in UW football annals, an outcome that has helped ruin this season.

Lake's week didn't end any better than it began when on Monday he disparaged Oregon's academic reputation and didn't really realize it. He certainly didn't apologize for what he said. 

“Our battles are really, the schools that we go against are way more, have academic prowess, like the University of Washington — Notre Dame, Stanford, USC," Lake said at last Monday's media briefing. "We go with a lot of battles toe-to-toe all the way to the end with those schools. So I think that’s made up in your [media] world. In our world, we battle more academically prowess teams.” 

His comment inflamed Oregon enough that school president Michael Schill offered an expedient public rebuke.

Quiet all week, Ducks football coach Mario Cristobal waited until the game was over before he provided his own sarcastic response to Lake. 

"Proud of the way our guys came over," he said in his postgame interview session, "and showed their prowess in the inclement weather."

No, it has not been a good week for Jimmy Lake. And there's still Sunday to go.

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