They sat in the son’s home to watch the father’s alma mater, just the two of
them, a memory Bill Sprinkle will cherish forever, even if a national
championship eluded his Washington Huskies that night. He played there
in the 1960s. Years later, he would drive his son, Danny, the middle of
his three children, from their home in Helena, Mont., to one game each
season at Husky Stadium.
Even after so many decades and multiple renovations, Bill, now 77, feels the
hair on the back of his neck stand up when he walks in.
“It’s kind of a primeval-type visit when I go there,” he said. “You look at
the past and see all the buried souls, if you will, that are in your
memory.”
Though Danny never lived in Seattle or attended the school, he grew up rooting
for the Huskies, wearing purple and hanging UW posters on his walls.
“He was all-consumed by it,” Bill says. And so he wouldn’t have missed
Michael Penix Jr. and Rome Odunze taking on Michigan for a national
title, even if, as they watched the television together in the basement
of Danny’s home in Logan, Utah, father and son never broached the
subject of Danny some day coaching the UW men’s basketball team.
Instead, it was an evening meant for indulging in their shared pastime, however prescient that scene might feel today.
“We didn’t really talk about the future at all,” Bill said. “Just talked
about the present, and how lucky we were to be doing what we’re doing.
It was just that kind of night — sit around and BS. He was happy about
doing that with his dad. That was a good night.”
Not three months later, Bill and his wife, Danette, accompanied Danny on a
private jet ride to Seattle, where the parents sat in the front row with
their oldest daughter, Erin, a Seattle resident, to watch Danny be
introduced as the Huskies’ new coach.
He grew up in Montana, then played and eventually coached at Montana
State. He takes pride in representing that state wherever he goes.
Given his father’s history, Danny considers the UW job something of a
homecoming, too. He admits that he left more than one Montana State or
Utah State football game early so he could watch the Huskies.
“Probably as close as you could possibly get to your alma mater,” he said.
The Sprinkle name already is written in Seattle history, if you know where
to look. One of Bill’s uncles, Dick Sprinkle, similarly lettered as a
football player at UW from 1948-50 — overlapping with the great Hugh
McElhenny — but is more widely remembered for his career as the original
valet at Canlis restaurant. Dick Sprinkle became a Seattle dining icon
by matching cars to their owners, strictly by memory, for some four
decades. MSNBC once described him as a “valet-parking savant” whose photographic memory allowed the restaurant to operate without handing out tickets.
Another of Bill’s uncles, Don Sprinkle, was elected King County Sheriff before
he died from a heart attack, at age 47, in 1963. As a hobby, Don also
coached the semi-pro Seattle Ramblers football team — originally the
Rainier Beach Athletic Club Ramblers — for 15 seasons. Dick even played
for him after college. Don had attended Queen Anne High School and
received a football scholarship to Oregon in 1935, but left after his
freshman year to move home and help his family. A book titled “Take a Lap,” published in 1989, chronicles his time coaching the Ramblers, who at the time were the closest thing Seattle had to a pro football team.
Leave a comment
Bill was born in Seattle, too. He settled in Montana, where he became a
three-sport star at Great Falls Central High School, and was eventually
inducted into the state’s high-school athletics Hall of Fame.
Still, he says, when it came to choosing a college, “I was kind of a Seattle
guy. It was fun for me to go there. That was kind of my first pick.”
He even turned down Notre Dame and legendary coach Ara Parseghian. Bill
visited South Bend as a high-schooler, but was told the Irish didn’t
have a scholarship available for him. Maybe six weeks later, an
assistant called and said there was an open scholarship, after all, but
Bill told him that he planned to attend Washington, which had played in
three Rose Bowls under coach Jim Owens in the five seasons prior to his
enrollment, including a 17-7 loss to Illinois his senior year of high
school.
Bill remembers the coach persisting: “They can’t play football there. You need to be at Notre Dame.”
