So what have we learned this week from the Demond Williams melodrama? You know, the “I’m-staying-I’m-breaking-my-contract-no-wait-I’m-back-after-all” fiasco.

For all the fury packed into Williams’ 48-hour dalliance with the wolves of college football, the fun may just be beginning. How will his return play with teammates, how will it go over with Washington boosters? Will it bring some sense to the college enterprise in that a contract is, you know, supposed to mean something?

It has been suggested that Williams will have to repair a fractured locker room. I doubt that’s much of a challenge. Pro athletes – and let’s face it, Williams, at $4.5-million-or-thereabouts-a-year, is essentially a pro athlete – are routinely indulgent of peers who hold out or otherwise squeeze the system for all they can get. It’s a business, and they realize it.

Washington scores points for taking a hard line with Williams' contract and no doubt, that's going over well with its collegiate peers. Still, I think it’ll be tougher to win over the fan base, and surely tougher for the UW to plead to donors that they just need a few more thousand from them to be competitive in today’s NIL world gone mad. If they haven’t already grasped the folly of giving more, giving more and then giving some more, and then seeing that $4.5-million player try to walk out the door for $6 million, some of those donors might just say, “What’s the point?”

For the time being, at least until Williams scrambles 17 yards on third-and-eight, he has some amends to make. The most outspoken UW honk on the Husky flagship radio station, Dave “Softy” Mahler, took note that Williams’ initial announcement came via social media during a memorial for fallen UW soccer player Mia Hamant, and called Williams “a turncoat who just quit on his team.” And a more unflattering description.

As for the mess Williams created, one of the popular rationales for his impertinence this week is: When you were 19 years old, didn’t you ever make a mistake?

What a crock.

Yes, I made mistakes as a 19-year-old (and more than one thereafter). But no, I didn’t have Doug Hendrickson of Wasserman Football, a licensed agent, curating my every move.

If we can assume that most of Williams’ existence as a student at the University of Washington is tied up in his stature as a football player – and in today’s transactional age, that’s not a sin – then we should be able to conclude that anything having to do with the sport, or where he plays it, is carefully considered.

Somehow, that didn’t happen when, as the calendar flipped to a new year, he signed a new deal with Washington, and a few days later, tried to sabotage it.

That could have been avoided so easily. If his worth on an open market was important to him, he could have held off signing with Washington and surely gotten the requisite intel quietly from his agent.

Or he simply could have entered the transfer portal without signing that UW deal, endured the tsk-tsking from Husky fans, and discovered what he was worth. There was always the option to come back – and without some of the hurdles he now faces.

His relationship with Coach Jedd Fisch will likely be a clandestine matter going forward. That dynamic now includes a social-media post critical of Williams the other day from Fisch’s wife.

I’ve always found Fisch a little too solicitous of Williams, publicly at least, almost to the point of fawning. A year ago, after Williams had a big day in a losing cause in the Sun Bowl, Fisch said, “We’re going to do everything we can to get him to New York City (for a Heisman ceremony) one day.”

First, how about you get him to the point where he leads the Huskies to more than 37 points, their total against the four teams – Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin and Oregon – that defeated Washington in 2025?

After the UW beat Washington State 59-24 in September, Fisch was asked about having some of the most prominent Huskies, including Williams, playing in the last few minutes of a game that was long since secure. Fisch explained that it was important to players to reach milestones like 100 yards rushing or receiving, or 300 yards passing.

If you insist.

Right here, a dose of perspective. It’s easy for us old white guys to draw conclusions and apply those to a world of kids who grew up poor and often guided by a single parent. Having covered college sports for decades and seen some of those inequalities, I think there’s a side to this story that sheds a more forgiving light on Williams.

But now comes the intriguing part – the difficult part, the challenging part – for Williams, for his coach, for the Huskies and the fans. After this week, everything is a little different.