Apparently I have learned to spell "Michalczik" for nothing.

UW put out a release today saying:

Washington football coach Steve Sarkisian announced today that Jim Michalczik has left the UW coaching staff to take a position with the Oakland Raiders.

Michalczik was hired to the Husky staff in December as the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach.

The UW staff currently has two openings on its football coaching staff. The NCAA allows a Division I-A staff to have a head coach and nine assistants.

Here's my story from the Tuesday paper. (A clarification not mentioned in that story: Michalczik had not yet signed a contract with UW. However, if he wants out, I don't know what Sark would gain by forcing him to stay.)

Michalczik is the second to assistant to follow his "yes" to Sarkisian with a "no," following Aaron Roderick who made an even quicker U-turn back to Utah.

This leaves Sarkisian with two openings on his staff: offensive coordinator and receivers coach.

The significance of the loss of Michalczik is mitigated somewhat in that Sarkisian intends to call plays for the UW offense next season. And, of course, that probably lessens the pool of candidates who might be interested in the job.

The good-news, bad-news nature of the Huskies' Bay Area split over the weekend resulted in good-news/bad-news in today's polls.

The Huskies fell out of the AP writers poll after two weeks, while climbing one spot to 24th in the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll.

Here are the polls. Here's my story from the Tuesday paper.