While the announcers for the Ohio State-Michigan game and USC-Notre Dame game were cueing their “there’s his Heisman moment” proclamation Washington QB Michael was still several hours away from starting in the Apple Cup.  The rivalry game was his 6th time starting a game at 10:30 pm in the East and 7th game that started at 9 pm or later.

The Washington games were starting so late that Penix wasn’t even an afterthought to the Heisman selection committee, snubbing the nation’s number 1 passer.

While Penix has been torching defenses with his pin-point accuracy and leading the Huskies to a ten-win season a year after the Huskies sputtered to a 4-8 season.

Former Washington and Pittsburg Steeler defensive lineman Jordan Reffett noted the difficulty of defending Penix.

“A lot of QB’s these days are system “volume” passers,” Reffett said.  “They throw for a lot of yards. Penix is ‘surgical’ on third down and fits the ball into tight windows and coverages. Defenses have to pick their poison with Penix because he and Grub use every blade of grass on the field. There is no throw he cannot make.”

But the problem for Penix is that half of the country is not awake to see it happen.  Then, by the time their eyes were open, the NFL is on the TV or the focus has shifted to the AP poll.

To further illustrate how Penix has transformed the Washington offense, in 2021 Washington had a total of 3,881 total yards of offense.  Penix had that many yards in the air  by his 11th game in purple and gold.  That’s with virtually the same offensive cast.

Former Husky QB Brock Huard, who provided the color commentary for the Washington-Oregon game, commented during the game that there were only a handful of QBs who could make a few of the throws that he was seeing from Penix–and most of them were in the NFL.

He said that in the 10th week of the college football season while other announcers were clearing their throats to proclaim the words “Heisman Moment”.

After what he’d witnessed in person Huard tweeted out about how special of a talent Penix was after watching him at his surgical best against Oregon.

That’s a former Husky QB himself who had finally been treated to his first look at Penix.

An already “East Coast Bias” exists and the Pac-12 Network made it so much worse for people to know the Washington QB’s name.

And they made it worse financially.  In the NIL era Penix should have  a national brand awareness rather than just one with a Seattle t-shirt company.

It’s not just Penix that’s getting ripped off by the late starts but receivers Rome Odunze, Jalen McMillan and other Husky players who should be household names outside Seattle.  That costs the players NIL money.

In all this is a monstrous failure by the Pac-12 Conference, the only ones to stop Michael Penix.