SEATTLE — Jimmy Lake cried with his wife, Michele, when they found out they had to leave Seattle.



“I still remember driving away in the U-Haul, everything packed up,” Lake recalled in August 2016, reflecting on a single season spent coaching Washington’s defensive backs. “That was a sad day.”



No, this isn’t an alternate timeline to the Chris Petersen era. This was November 2004, after Lake, along with the rest of Keith Gilbertson’s UW staff, had been fired amid a 1-10 season. Lake knew he was taking a risk when he left a similar gig at Eastern Washington to help coach the Huskies. UW went 6-6 in 2003 and missed out on a bowl, and the program was on shaky ground. But Lake felt he couldn’t turn down an opportunity to coach in the Pac-10 — he was 28 years old, after all — so he headed west for what turned out to be a rather brief tenure in Seattle.



It was a difficult lesson to learn, but a lesson...