By the end of the year, a lot of people were making the case. Certainly, nobody wanted to play them. They probably had the best wins that year, beating No. 1 FSU who ended 11-2 and No. 2 Va Tech who ended 11-1. Without looking, it's not often you get a shot at #1 and #2 during the season. It was the 2001 team, only with Dan Morgan and Santana Moss. They beat up a 2 loss Florida team in the Sugar in a game with a score as misleading as they come. Miami was Tuff in those days.
I agree with multiple perspectives here. Washington recovers quickly when they recover. Oregon has been more consistent, and you can't write off the Chip era any more than you can write off the Peterman era. Both programs got super lucky with those hires, but then again I am of the opinion that you always get lucky when you get a good one because they are so hard to find and predict.
Some Washington fans have had a harder time than others accepting that Oregon is not some gimmicky flash-in-the-pan program and has established itself as a national power. Some Oregon fans forget their history, or at least choose to. What are you gonna do? As Race said the other day, there are always those fans whose can always find some rationalization for their rivals doing well and for your favorite team doing poorly. Schedules, buying players, class, higher ceiling, higher floor, doing it the right way, better fans, worse fans, piss bottles, wheel chairs, porking lots, Nike, Microsoft, boating, blue bloods, history, we're not trying, you're trying too hard, stadiums, Keith Jackson, standing ovations, etc. etc. etc.
My therapist told me long ago you can't change people.