In the first few months on the job, the universe gave him a global pandemic and Bryce Beekman’s tragic death. Rolovich was dealt the worst hand to start off with, and handled it with incredible grace. I don’t understand what happened between beers at the Village Pub and the United movement in August 2020. He implemented a fun, high-scoring offense. He did a lot at Hawaii in the difficult circumstances he correctly identified. As a program builder, Rolovich brought so much promise.
This is why we were excited to see him at Washington State. It was incredibly impressive to watch, no matter the circumstances. He did a damn good job taking Norm Chow’s underperforming team, making it better, and transitioning to his own system. Where he really excelled was returning to his roots and implementing the Run and Shoot (with some help from Cole McDonald). He took talent and made that talent outperform. But at every opportunity, he’d remind folks about the hardship he faced, both in public and private.Īt the same time, Rolovich built something at Hawaii. This was part of the expectation setting, both for his program and for himself. From the moment Rolovich took over, he wasn’t shy about reminding people how poor the facilities were and how many disadvantages he faced at the school - points he was as correct about as he was quick to remind.
It’s hard to win at Hawaii, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. There’s a bar here that we should talk about. Rolovich was interesting, candid, and easy to talk to. They weren’t great, but they were Hawaii Good. Rolovich, the marketing he brought to his program, and his teams on the field, made people stand up and pay attention nationally. Hawaii had been bad since all of us were in a place to pick travel. The one thing we all agreed on was finding a reason to get to Hawaii. Most involved far-off tropical locations. Mine was sending a reporter to American Samoa with Joe Salavea’a for a recruiting story, which California Sunday ended up doing better than anyone could dream. It was an exercise in story selection as much as anything, and it kept us poking around at far-flung or out-of-the-way places, even if we never traveled there. We’d try to plan trips with a purpose and see if we could get them expensed. For the longest time, when I was at Banner Society, my college football reporting team had a game.
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