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On the madcap Thursday that defined the Washington football-coaching search — Pat Hill going, Mike Leach going, Steve Sarkisian coming — a well-placed mover and shaker on the college scene had a recommendation for the Huskies.

Do what Joe Kearney did.

Who’s Joe Kearney? Well, longtime followers of UW will recall Kearney as the athletic director who, after the 1974 season, introduced Don James as the next football coach. James would go on to become Don the Deity in Seattle, winning a national championship in 1991.

Kearney left here shortly after and went to Michigan State. He was looking for a basketball coach, and he unveiled Jud Heathcote of Montana, who in East Lansing, Mich., elicited a lot of the same quizzical looks as had James at Washington a few years earlier. Heathcote, of course, also won a national championship.

So all Scott Woodward, the new UW athletic director, had to do was go out and find a coach to win a national championship. Or, to put things in proper order: How about winning a game?

But the man’s point was clear: With big names dropping like skeet, Woodward needed to be able to fetch somebody worthy who wasn’t on the A list.

Is Steve Sarkisian that guy? Today, we don’t have a clue. In fact, Sarkisian and the Huskies haven’t even copped publicly yet to the notion that he’s the head coach.

Have to admit, Sarkisian’s age, 34, is a bit arresting. It hit home with the realization that he was the quarterback in 1996 when the Corey Dillon Huskies beat Brigham Young here. So Sarkisian was in college when Jim Lambright was on the back nine of his six-year tenure at Washington.

He’s young.

The real question in the Purple Nation: Is he capable? Is he dynamic?

And ultimately: Is he a fit?

There’s no doubt that Woodward and UW president Mark Emmert have walked out on a long limb with this one. Amid a lot of speculation that they were going to turn heads with the hire, they’ve instead named an outside assistant to the job for the first time since Jim Owens in 1957.