The veteran coach changes his appearance with opener approaching.

The University of Washington football team underwent a coaching change last week.

No, nobody got a pink slip. Just pink cheeks.

Co-defensive coordinator Chuck Morrell went for a dramatic clean-shaven look after months of resembling the president of a notorious California motorcycle club.

He went from the guy most likely to have a Harley parked outside Husky Stadium to someone driving the kids to school in the family station wagon.

With the season opener against Kent State just a week away, there's no more imagining Morrell dressed in a frayed leather jacket with a menacing Husky Sons of Anarchy patch on the back. He now seems more likely to wear a nerd pocket protector to the next staff meeting.

Previously one could have pictured Morrell, who spent 11 years as a head coach at Montana Tech, holding up his end in a bar fight in Bozeman or Missoula. No more. He looks like a Cub Scouts leader ready to call a meeting of 10-year-olds to order.

Naturally his Husky football players weighed in on his much less brazen appearance at practice, letting him know they noticed how he'd turned soft on them.

"They're just giving me a hard time," Morrell said. "I tell them I'm too pretty. Got to make sure I clean up once in a while. All the gray hairs they've been giving me, I had to get rid of them."

Information we didn't need, the veteran coach joked there might have been all kinds of food hidden away in his Grizzly Adams-styled follicles that needed to be taken out with the trash. 

Husky head coach Kalen DeBoer, as the face of Husky football, always comes across with a conservative, buttoned-down and closely shaven approach, which is befitting of his personality as much as a recommended job requirement. 

However, many of DeBoer's assistant coaches, with Morrell the most obvious, have come to practice typically sporting two- or three-days growth of facial hair.

It could be to send a message of unbridled toughness to their players or simply a matter of personal-hygiene convenience when working extended hours while getting ready for the coming season.

Morrell looks like a mild-mannered guy now, a lot more agreeable than before, instead of a coach with serious bite to him who lives in a cabin somewhere.

Yet UW players still would best be advised not to test him and find out. 

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