I'm more optimistic than the general consensus. I'd also take anything any cfb media dorks say with a grain of salt. When I was more in blogging I ended up being around and chatting with some and was shocked with how little they seemed to know about Pac-12 programs beyond the first layer or whatever the national supposed consensus was. Keep in-mind these are the same guys I think had USC picked to win the conference last year and Oregon to win more games than UW after how UW finished the season and with what they had coming back in comparison to those programs, and Oregon coming to Seattle.
I trust Fisch and company are good developers and judges of talent. Winning what they did at Arizona is no joke. I also know that they only won one game in his first year and five in his second so I do worry we're in for something like that, but just better - like 4 wins, then 8, then a breakthrough when Demond is a junior etc.
Sark's winning is hard to compare to me. The Pac-10/12 was two really good teams most those year then shit and he inherited closer to a situation like DeBoer inherited because the roster actually had some talent, a Top 10 NFL talent QB, and he and Ty benefitted from the state having more talent and most guys other than 5 stars generally going to UW.