Coaching Career
After three stints as a graduate assistant, Gilbertson became an offensive coordinator in 1977 at Utah State under head coach Bruce Snyder. After five seasons in Logan, he joined Dennis Erickson's new staff at Idaho, who immediately turned the Vandal program around in 1982, going 8–3 in the regular season and advancing to the quarterfinals of the I-AA playoffs. The following spring, Gilbertson departed for the Los Angeles Express of the newly formed USFL, where he coached as offensive coordinator for three seasons. Following the demise of the league, Gilbertson returned to Idaho in 1985, and the Vandals won their first Big Sky Conference title in 14 seasons. Erickson departed for Wyoming following the 1985 season, and Gilbertson was promoted to head coach of the Vandals program. In his three seasons as head coach (1986–88), Gilbertson's win-loss record was 28–9 (.757). Following consecutive conference championships and advancing to the Division I-AA national semifinals, Gilbertson left Moscow in 1989 for Seattle to become an assistant at Washington under Don James. His three-year stint concluded with the undefeated 1991 national championship team, for which served Gilbertson served as offensive coordinator.
After Washington, Gilbertson became the head coach at California in 1992. Despite leading Cal to a 9–4 record with a decisive victory in the 1993 Alamo Bowl, he was dismissed after his fourth season when the 1995 Bears went 3–8. Gilbertson's overall record at Cal was 20–26 (.435).
After Cal,he was an assistant coach for the NFL's Seattle Seahawks for three seasons (1996–1998) under Erickson. He would serve as the TE coach for the 1997 and 1998 seasons. In 1999, he returned to the Washington Huskies as an assistant head coach under new head coach Rick Neuheisel.
Gilbertson became the head coach at Washington in 2003 following the abrupt summer dismissal of Neuheisel. His first season was fairly respectable at 6-6; only a blowout loss to Cal in the next-to-last game of the season kept the Huskies out of a bowl game. The bottom fell out a year later, in which the Huskies finished 1-10, including only their second winless PCC/Big Five/Pac-8/Pac-10 record in peacetime. He was fired near the end of the season. His record at Washington was 7–16 (.304), the second worst coaching record in the history of the program, next to that of his successor, Tyrone Willingham. He then returned to the Seattle Seahawks as an assistant under Mike Holmgren.
Gilbertson overall record as a collegiate head coach stands at 55–51 (.519).
Read more about this topic: Keith Gilbertson
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)