I keep forgetting to mention this, but there is one major factor behind this move that no one is talking about but they should be.
UW is in for a pretty steep decline next year. I am totally stone cold serious when I say that even Colorado and Cal have some young talent at QB. Miles doesn't even meet that standard, and for all we know he could be the best of our three QBs. Even if I'm wrong and Miles is a solid QB, solid is a pretty big step down from the record setting production Price has given us the last 3 years. In addition to that we are basically losing our core to the NFL. Not just Price, but likely Sankey, ASJ, Smith, Parker, possibly Shelton and several other major defensive players.
Even with a weak OOC schedule, it's going to be tough to get next year's Husky team to 8 or 9 wins. Sure, they are a lock to start 4-0, but they were 4-0 this year and basically went .500 in a brutal Pac-12 with a far more talented team. It might have taken Sark a few years to recover from losing Price, the same way that Romar is in a slump right now after he lost those two major recruits to the NBA. I could definitely see him getting fired a few years out, and so I think the premature calls for his job gave him that same "escape a burning building" mentality that Pete had at USC when he came to Seattle.
Wasn't Sark 4-0 when Kiffin got fired? Not that I know, but I truly believe Sark was asked and said "no" to USC that week. But after the last half of the season, I think the tone changed, and in retrospect, his leaving for USC makes a lot of sense.