Back here on the cover three podcast live on CBS Sports Network from Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas, Nevada.

And that sharp dress gentleman down on the end is Washington coach Jed Fish.

You were with us last season looking at how to take that Washington team and the program into the Big Ten.

And you had experience, right, from your time as an assistant.

After leading that team through that first season, were there any surprises about Big Ten football in the modern era?

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge was to travel.

We had two games that were noon kickoffs

Eastern standard time, so 9 a.m. hour time and trying to really work through like what does that

mean? It's like a 5 a.m. team breakfast. It's a 6 a.m. you're getting on the bus. How do you get the

guys motivated to play, you know, the three and a half hours needed not just a good

first quarter or a good second quarter or not just start slow and pick it up so that's been that

was a challenge that we got to work through um i would say the conference is so good and the quality

of players the size of the team uh we we didn't have the players, really, to compete

week in and week out. Now, we won our six home games, and we had some good wins against

Michigan and SC and UCLA. But really, for the most part, for our team, I felt like we needed

to get bigger. We need to get better in the trenches, run the football better, and stop the run. You mentioned the road trips and that kind of impact that that had on your team. You guys struggled on the road, but I think there's more context to it in that. You played three teams in the road who ended up in the college football playoff. And you also had to travel multiple time zones for most of those except for the Oregon game. But from what happened last year, is there anything you guys are trying to approach differently for how you take those trips to kind of, you know, have a little bit better success on the road? Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, certainly part of it. And I said that to our team. I said to anyone that wanted to listen, like we weren't as good as Oregon was last year. We weren't as good as Penn State was last year. And we weren't as good as Indiana was last year. And those three teams won 11 games or more. And we played them all on the road. Playing Iowa on the road. Not many people have had a lot of success there. And then, you know, we wound up having a rough game against Rutgers. We missed the three field goals and got stopped on the two and they got stopped on the one-yard line against Wazoo. So, I mean, those were our games. So, you know, what does it really mean? What does it really look like? I think that we learned that Coach Spurrier used to always say, you know, the win on the road, you bring a good team.

And, you know, how good of a team we can bring will determine how many games will win on the road. You have that advantage at home. And on the road, you don't have that advantage. So you have to be able to out physical them, out tough them, out execute him. What was it about DeMond that you saw in practice that made you say, hey, I know he's 18 and my starting quarterback's like 24, 25 years old, but I still had to get this kid into the game. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was one of those weird scenarios, right? Like, when we got to Washington, we got there, and it was really a brand new team and a brand new program. And it's almost you're making a decision like you almost felt like you're an expansion team a little bit

in the way it felt one returning starter at a 22, 42, 44 guys on the roster when we walked in the

door. We were trying to build through the spring portal, which is not how you want to build a team. We were convincing Will Rogers who signed with Kalin to stay with us. But on the same token, we needed to plan for the future. And I needed to see in spring, like, how good can demand be? And if we are struggling, like, what do we want to, you know,

is he a weapon or is he a everyday starter in year one? And I thought early on he was a weapon.

Will had real good success early through 10 touchdowns, no interceptions, the first six games

of the year. And then we got to a point where we were kind of getting a little stale. We weren't executing at the highest level. We were playing against better competition. We were struggling to block him. And I thought it would be a better opportunity to see if DeMond can make some plays with his feet. And then he started making plays with his arm too. And's kind of how it happened you offered him early in

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