It was the end of the 2001 football season and after a chaotic search, former Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White introduced the new Fighting Irish head coach.

All signs pointed toward a return to normalcy for the illustrious Notre Dame program.

“To the people at the NCAA, he’s a man of impeccable integrity,” White said in 2001. “To the recruiting gurus, he’s among the very best in attracting talent — even while maintaining the highest SAT scores in the nation. He’s a disciplinarian whose players love him. For us, I am delighted to be able to say this: He’s the new head football coach at the University of Notre Dame and his name is Tyrone Willingham.”

Since that time, much has changed.

As the Huskies host Notre Dame this weekend, Tyrone Willingham will be standing on the opposite sideline of his former team for the second time in his career at Washington.

While the coaches and players for both teams insist that this is just another game, it is also an opportunity to reflect on Willingham’s career since that fateful day when he was introduced as the new Notre Dame head coach.

Following a 2001 football season in which his team finished 5-6, Bob Davie was fired as head coach of the Fighting Irish.

Meanwhile, across the country in Palo Alto, Calif., Tyrone Willingham was drawing the attention of the football world for leading the Stanford Cardinal — longtime Pac-10 doormat — to a 44-36-1 record over the course of seven years.

“Tyrone has led [Stanford] with the highest academic profile in all of major college football, and over that time he’s won two conference Coach of the Year awards and taken his teams to four bowl games,” White said the day of Willingham’s hire.

In Willingham’s first year at Notre Dame, the Irish started off the season 8-0 and he became the first Notre Dame coach to win 10 games in his first season.

In the following two seasons, though, things became much more reminiscent of the Bob Davie years. In 2003, the Irish finished a disappointing 5-7 and didn’t fare too much better in 2004 with a 6-6 record.

What happened next, just four days after the 2004 season, took almost everybody by surprise.

Just three years into a five-year deal, Willingham was fired from Notre Dame.

“To say I am disappointed, I think that very much misses the mark,” Willingham said in a press conference the day after his firing. “But at the same time, I understand that I didn’t meet the expectations or standards that I set for myself in this program.”

When asked at that same press conference what he would’ve done differently in retrospect, Willingham seemed resigned to the realities of the college football coaching world.

“There’s only one thing,” he said. “Win. That’s it. That’s the bottom line. Win.”

At the same time, another tradition-laden university found itself without a coach and not living up to its potential on the field. This college was, of course, the University of Washington.

Following the Rick Neuheisel debacle, the UW found itself losing all credibility under new head coach Keith Gilbertson. After a 1-10 season with the Huskies in 2004, Gilbertson was fired.

The timing was seemingly perfect as Willingham’s firing a few weeks after Gilbertson’s allowed former UW Athletic Director Todd Turner and UW President Mark Emmert to pursue the big-name coach with a strong knowledge of the Pac-10 from his Stanford days.

“When we sat down and talked with Tyrone, it couldn’t have been clearer in my mind that this was the man that we wanted to lead the University of Washington back to its former glory days,” Emmert said at Willingham’s first Washington press conference. “I’m absolutely delighted that coach Willingham is with us. We couldn’t be more lucky.”

Willingham knew about the tradition of Husky football very well when he was hired and he aimed to get the UW back on track.

“What I would hope to do in my time here is to go back to all those great things and great accomplishments that this program has achieved,” he said.

And with that, new chapters in the career of Tyrone Willingham and the history of Washington football began.

In 2005, his first year as the UW’s coach, the Huskies were unable to take advantage of having 19 returning starters and finished with a 2-9 record. The next two seasons for the Huskies turned out to be only a little better, going 5-7 in 2006 and 4-9 last year. This year, things have taken a turn for the worst with an 0-6 start.

What does this all mean for Saturday’s game?

With his job on the line again, Willingham knows what needs to happen against his former employer.

“It comes down to one simple fact. Let’s win the football game.”

Reach reporter Scott Eisen at sports@dailyuw.com.