In his Tuesday plea for patience for coach Tyrone Willingham, UW president Mark Emmert said his to the Associated Press:

“We have not helped them at all with this schedule that was set up years ago. It’s an awful schedule.”

And that's certainly been the conventional wisdom. But two weeks into the football season, I'm wondering if this schedule is going to turn out to be the monster so many of us once thought.

Oklahoma, which comes in Saturday, appears to be the real deal ... a legit national championship contender.

But Brigham Young looked like an absolutely beatable team that would finish in the 4-6 midlevel range of the Pac-10. Good enough, but certainly nothing UW should be afraid to invite into Husky Stadium.

And Notre Dame, which went 3-9 last season, sure didn't look much improved in its come-from-behind home win over a San Diego State team that lost the week before to Division I-AA Cal-Poly.

There's no doubt that UW's out-of-conference schedule is more demanding of Willingham and these Huskies, than, say, the O-O-C schedule of Mike Stoops and Arizona: Idaho, Toledo and New Mexico. But that seems more like a badge of honor than anything to regret.

Plus, we're only two weeks into the season -- far too early to be making excuses for a season that isn't yet lost.

Tuesday was full of news, between E.J. Savannah being allowed to leave the team and president Mark Emmert speaking out in favor of patience for coach Tyrone Willingham.

All of that sort of ended up squeezing some other interesting stuff out of our Wednesday paper.

So, here's a little bit of some of that interesting stuff:

Offensive coordinator Tim Lappano on the tailback situation in the absence of tailback Chris Polk due to a should separation, which will certainly keep him out this weekend and perhaps end his season:
"I think David (Freeman) and Brandon Johnson, Willie Griffin, and I think there's a role for Brandon Yakaboski. I'm not going to say what it is, but I think there's a role for him in this football game as well. Again, I think it will be a little bit of tailback by committee. We'll see what happens with who we start, but David played extremely well and Willie did a nice job on some inside runs. We'll just go with that right now at the tailback spot."

Freeman on why he played well (30 yards on six carries) against BYU:
I wasn't being scared, wasn't letting the pressure get to me. I just went out there and played football: ran hard, saw the holes and hit them, and that's basically what football's about for a running back: not being scared."

And finally, Ryan Perkins describing his blocked 35-yard PAT attempt to tie against BYU:
"The only thing that was unusual was it was right away when I heard another thud after I hit it. Like I said, we had pretty good film, and it looked like was three and a half or three yards in front of me when the guy got through. And I'm seven yards from the line of scrimmage. I've seen a couple of side view angles of it, and the call was carrying up pretty good... about five or six feet off the ground at the three-yard mark."

The Huskies have released linebacker E.J. Savannah, last season's leading tackler who has been separated from the team all season due to academic and other undisclosed issues.

Here is the announcement sent out by the university:

The University of Washington athletic department has granted junior linebacker E.J. Savannah his request to contact other institutions regarding a transfer, head coach Tyrone Willingham announced today.

Savannah, a native of Bellevue, Wash., redshirted his true freshman season in 2005 and will enter his fourth season of collegiate eligibility this fall. Washington will support his desire to transfer to another institution, provided it is outside of the Pacific-10 Conference. He will be required to sit out the upcoming season due to NCAA transfer rules and will have one year of eligibility remaining.

“Our top priority is to help E.J. earn a college degree, whether that is at the University of Washington or at another institution,” said Willingham. “We have provided him with a tremendous support system during the last three years. I hope he is able to learn from his experience at Washington and become successful in whatever he chooses to do in life.”

The Associated Press has filed this report from an interview with University of Washington president Mark Emmert:

SEATTLE (AP) — The president of the University of Washington says Husky fans need to give football coach Tyrone Willingham a break.

President Mark Emmert says the team has one of its toughest schedules ever. The Huskies have gone 0-2 and face No. 3 Oklahoma next. Emmert says many fans have been offering their opinions on the football program.

But the president says no one is more frustrated by the losing record than Willingham.

Emmert says the university was weeks away from hiring a new athletic director. The man who hired Willingham was forced to resign.

The "weeks away" comment on the athletic director search sounds like a bit of a backing off on an earlier Emmert projection that the new AD might be named by the beginning of UW's fall session, which starts Sept. 24. That prediction was echoed over the weekend by action UW athletic director Scott Woodward.

We're waiting for our usual football interviews at Hec Ed, but today we also get the floor show of a little hoops on the court.

Right now Spencer Hawes, Jon Brockman and Quincy Pondexter -- past present and future crucial guys to the program -- are out there working a series of one-on-one possessions against each other.

Formal hoops practices begin Oct. 15 ... and it should be a season almost as fascinating -- and almost as important to the future of the program -- as the football season just starting to unfold.

I might be able to take advantage of the football bye next week to work up a little something on basketball. Feel free to suggest anything you'd like to read about.

Coach Tyrone Willingham told the Pac-10 media today that the team is expecting to get the results of Chris Polk's MRI this afternoon. Willingham said that the freshman tailback is doubtful for this week, but also acknowleded that Polk's season could be in doubt.

"We’ll be reading his MRI this morning and it kind of looks doubtful that he’ll be ready this week and it could even be by the time we get to the afternoon it could be long-term," Willingham said.

Asked if that meant he might miss the rest of the season, Willingham replied: "Could be."

True freshman David Freeman is atop this week's depth chart at tailback.

Willingham also said raised the possibility of some resolution regarding linebacker E.J. Savannah, last season's leading tackler who has been out since the start of fall camp due to academic and other unspecified issues.

"There are some developments that are taking place that maybe by the end of the day I might be able to give you some more precise information on that," he said.

The weekly Pac-10 coaches conference call opened with a couple of news items of local interest.

Oregon's Mike Bellotti, a member of the NCAA rules committee, said that the unsportsmanlike penalty on Jake Locker at the end of the BYU game "might have been the letter of the rule, but it wasn’t the intent of the rule." Bellotti expressed reluctance in making this more of a judgment issue, but said the committee might look at changing the wording.

Meanwhile, Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh said that Tacoma's Tavita Pritchard remains his team's leader and starting quarterback, even though three quarterbacks played last weekend at Arizona State.