Tyrone Willingham says he would resign if he didn't see himself as part of the solution.

Scott Woodward says he doesn't believe in mid-season firings.

Here's your chance to weigh in with what you think, on the TNT poll on whether Willingham should be fired.

Meanwhile, there was predictably a lot of discussion on and around this general topic today, including a few minutes I spent with Willingham one-on-one. Here are Willingham quotes from that discussion:

On whether he would consider resignation:
I’ve always said this, that it is important that everybody in our program be part of the solution. And I’ve always said that if I’m cynical about my job then, no, I don’t want to do my job. If I’m not living up to the tenants that I’ve set for myself and our young men in our program, then I’ll make the right decisions that reflect the right things to do for our young men and our university.

On if resigning would make people think he's a quitter:
You can’t control what other people think. When you win games, you don’t win by enough points. When you lose, you’re the worst coach in the country. I listened to (Tennessee coach) Phil Fulmer the other day and Phil said, I think, 'All of a sudden I didn’t become stupid.' So you’re not going to control what people say, feel or believe, so I’m not going to get into that. I’m going to be true to our university, I’m going to be true to our young men.

On why he isn't resigning:
I think we can win football games. I think we can be a good football team. We’ve shown that we can score points on offense, even against Oklahoma we moved the football. Unfortunately, we turned it over, which is not good; you can’t do that against a great football team. I thought we had a heck of a football game against BYU. Against Oregon we didn’t do very much. But at the same time, at halftime that was a close football game. So I think there are some things there. What we have to do is figure out a way to get over the hump. So that’s my job to figure out something to just change, switch, do something to get us over the hump. It’s the players’ responsibility to make plays when they get the opportunity to do both of that. So we’ve got to do both of those, and that’s been consistent since the day I arrived here. We’ve got to find a way to get over the hump and when we do that it’s really pretty nice.

And a few more questions on the topic from the press conference itself:

On whether he needs to vary his message to the team before they tune him out:
I think that with the young men that you have today, you always have to have a new message, a new presentation or a new way of presenting it. I think that’s the age we live in. I kind of call it the seven minute culture. I think it’s because TV’s commercials are every seven minutes. So you’ve got to change the message. But at the same time it does not mean that you can’t drive home the same message because no matter what you do, there are fundamentals to writing, there are fundamentals to reading, there are fundamentals to athletics. There are fundamentals to everything that we do, and we have got to learn those fundamentals so those have got to be a part of our game and you can’t get away from those. But you do have to change things up, you do have to have some variety, you do have to have some diversity. So I have to come up with a new way of saying something very consistently that catches their imagination, gets their thought process and triggers it in a different light but at the same time it’s still very fundamentally sound with what we have to do. Because no matter what you change, it’s still a game of blocking, tackling, running, catching.

On what he would tell an employer about why he should keep his job:
Because I have the enthusiasm for it, the focus and concentration for it, and I’m still very much into what I’m doing.

On what he turns to through tough times:
I turn one, to my experience of having been in tough situations as a kid coming forward. You look at all the things that you’ve done in your life that every now and then you have to go back and count your successes – and I’ve had a few successes since I was born, and waking up this morning is one of those. It’s not bad.

Realdawg.com is reporting that Deandre Coleman, perhaps the most prized recruit in the state this year, has backed off of his earlier oral commitment to Washington.

“I am opening up my recruitment,” he told RealDawg. “This is a very big decision and one of the most important decisions that I will ever have to make. ... I still like Washington. My family and I just decided that I should look at other schools to make sure this was the right choice. The Huskies are having a rough season right, now and I’m not sure if Willingham will be there next year. I’ll take all of my visits and make a decision sometime in the future.”

Coleman 6-6, 290-pound defensive tackle at Garfield High School.

Obviously, with UW's present in such a sorry state, some idea of a brighter future is one of the few things fans have to look forward to. If recruits start jumping ship, or other prospects continue staying away, that could become a very big hole on what is already increasingly seen as a sinking ship.

Jake Locker underwent surgery on his fractured right thumb this morning. He will speak to the media tomorrow.

Locker would be expected to miss six to eight weeks ... as a quarterback. However, coach Tyrone Willingham confirmed that it is possible Locker could return at another position. He would not say what position that would be, or even whether it would be offense or defense.

Willingham discounted the danger of Locker being injured if he returns, say, as a safety; noting that all football players run the risk of injury at all positions -- including quarterback, obviously.

Some direct quotes from Willingham today:

On Locker:
He did have a fracture coming out of the ballgame, of the first metacarpal of the thumb and it required surgery. The surgery should have started at some point this morning, I think right around 11 o’clock give or take a few minutes. And what it appears to be is it could be as many as six to eight weeks is typically the recovery time for that injury. Outside of that we don’t know anymore at this time.

On Locker changing positions:
It is possible. I couldn’t tell you where right now, but I think I said and others have said that he is a tremendous athlete with the ability to play five, six, seven positions exists.

On Locker's risk of injury at another position:
You always run that risk. The play that he got hurt on was an extra-effort play that really didn’t contact anybody other than the ground. So that risk is always there. But this is a young man – every much like a lot of young men that we have on our football team – wants to win. And he’ll be willing to do anything that will help the football team and win.

On what position he might move to:
That would be a little stretch for me right now because you really don’t know how he’ll come back and what that means. Does that mean he has a cast on the size of a helmet or something of that nature. How will be he outfitted. All of those things. I wouldn’t speculate.

Washington coaches have honored quarterback Ronnie Fouch (offense) and LB Chris Stevens (special teams) as players of the week for their performance against Stanford.

However, for the first time this season, no defensive players were honored.

Fouch entered in relief of starting QB Jake Locker and completed 13 of 27 passes for 186 yards and one touchdown.

Stevens was credited with three tackles.

Also honored were LB Fred Wiggs, C Mykenna Ikehara and S Greg Walker for their work on service teams.

Meanwhile, RB David Freeman and LB Donald Butler, who were injured in the loss to Stanford, remain listed atop their position depth charts.

At quarterback, Fouch is listed as the starter with walk-on Taylor Bean No. 2 and true freshman Luther Leonard No. 3.

There are two undecided starting positions listed: Alvin Logan or Jermaine Kearse at wide receiver and Joshua Gage or Matt Houston at outside linebacker.