With Alabama's recent promotion of Steve Sarkisian to offensive coordinator, it's hard not to think of the Crimson Tide's matchup against Washington in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl as a full-circle reunion.

Sarkisian coached the Huskies from 2009-2013, and his fingerprints remain on this 2016 version of Washington.

Sarkisian left for USC in December 2013, but the Washington recruiting class he inked earlier that year has become a particularly significant force in the Huskies' surge to the big stage.

That 2013 class included receiver John Ross; running back Lavon Coleman; cornerback Kevin King; pass-rush specialist Joe Mathis; linebackers Keishawn Bierria, Azeem Victor and Connor O'Brien; offensive lineman Coleman Shelton; and kicker Cameron Van Winkle, among others.

Aside from filling key roles this season in the Huskies' 12-1 campaign, all of those players have had a front-row seat to experience Washington's transition from Sarkisian to new head coach Chris Petersen.

"The first year, we were a team divided between Sark guys and Pete guys," King said. "The second year, the pendulum began to swing. Now, everybody is all-in. I see all the guys on board now."

Washington was a winning team under Sarkisian, going 8-4 in his final season, but players theorize much of the current jump from good to elite can be credited to a cultural change Petersen brought to Seattle.

"It's no longer about me, myself and I," Coleman said. "It's no longer about how I just came here to ball out and get what's mine. It's more about coming into a culture where it's about being accountable to one another and making everything form into a unit so that everyone plays for each other."

Coleman says that the first step in that team-wide maturation actually came when Sarkisian was still coach. All of Washington's incoming freshman athletes enroll in the school's Learning + Experience + Achievement Program, known as LEAP, an academic boot camp of sorts to prepare the youngsters to become college students.

LEAP fostered immediate bonding among Coleman's recruiting class and set the initial foundation for what was to come.

"It was the most epic time of 2013, a mature learning experience," he said. "Our LEAP experience was something that you can never take away from us."

Just a few months later, after the conclusion of the 2013 regular season, all Washington players received a text message calling them to an emergency team meeting. That's where they learned Sarkisian was leaving to coach USC, and that's when the next chapter of the Huskies' progression began.

Petersen arrived from Boise State and implemented a ritual he dubbed "Real Life Wednesdays" with the team, in which players are divided into random groups and separated into different rooms. Over the course of two-hour sessions, Washington teammates are required to truthfully answer a series of pointed questions about themselves in front of their teammates.

"You find out more and more about a person that you didn't know about," Coleman said. "And after that, you see that everybody is not so different. Everybody has had their life struggles, everybody has had their hard times. So you see that you're next to your brother."

In the year before Petersen arrived, Coleman says that he was "more of an introverted guy" who would go home and play video games after football was done for the day. That changed after he was forced to become more familiar with his teammates.

This shift to greater trust and off-field compatibility across the roster enabled the Huskies to fully follow through on their preseason goal of winning the Pac-12. That was no longer just lip service entering this season.

"The older guys and the younger guys have meshed as one -- this 2016 team has made that commitment to no longer have the feeling of losing," Coleman said. "But to keep that commitment, you have to want to play for each other. And that's something that's been due for a long time. There's nothing more that you want to do than to show up for your brother playing next to you."

The effects of the off-field cohesion that Washington has fostered are apparent in the staggering, balanced efficiency this team has showcased. Quarterback Jake Browning has thrown touchdown passes at a higher rate than anyone in NCAA history; Ross leads all Power 5 receivers in scoring catches; and Coleman has split backfield duties seamlessly with Myles Gaskin to average 7.8 yards per carry. The defense, tops in the Pac-12, has also efficiently roared.

This has been the execution of the blueprint Petersen envisioned, one that didn't even exist when the 2013 recruiting class first set foot on campus.

"We came in with a lot of egos," King said. "There was a lot of headbutting with each other and the coaches because everyone was used to being the man."

The old days, though, are now tiny specks in the rearview mirror as the Huskies prepare to bring it full circle Dec. 31 against Alabama, where their former coach will be on the opponent's staff. Washington will give the Crimson Tide its best shot as a well-oiled machine, on and off the field.

"We're all more than just friends, we're family," Coleman said. "It's crazy how well we get along. It's like a big group of kids."