A lot of times when football coaches come back to the school where they carved out a niche in their playing days, they avoid direct comparisons to those good times gone by.
A lot of times when football coaches come back to the school where they carved out a niche in their playing days, they avoid direct comparisons to those good times gone by.
It was great back then, they will say, but times have changed, we’re in a new landscape for college football and we just have to stick to our plan and develop a new identity.
Nick Rolovich, the former Hawaii quarterback for coach June Jones in those celebrated turnaround days for the football program 15 years ago, is back as head coach and yeah, he pretty much would like to replicate the whole show, the winning, the atmosphere, the team unity, all of it.
“We understand it will never be exactly the same,” Rolovich said the other day in Hilo for an athletics department fund raiser, “I’m not June, none of those players are here, I don’t have a need to copy someone else, I understand you have to be who you are, but having said all that, what we had going is what we want to do once again.”
What they had was, at the very least memorable, not just for this state but for anyone who followed college football, especially for the quarterback who saved his best for last.
In 2000 and 2001, Rolovich started 14 games for June Jones and while his 54.7 completion percentage was below what coaches look for these days, he played to a 139.1 efficiency rating and he tossed 40 touchdowns and just 13 interceptions, very impressive stats for then or now.
The indelible memory was the last game of 2001 against ninth-ranked and 12-0 BYU at Aloha Stadium. Later that night and for the next few days, Rolovich found out how big that game truly was.
“We didn’t play every year, so I didn’t realize the magnitude of it all,” he said. “There were guys who played against BYU previously that mentioned it (before the game), but I didn’t really listen to it that much, I was more involved with getting ready to play.”
The preparation was worth all the time and attention Rolovich gave to the game.
When college football followers on the mainland woke up the next day and saw the 72-45 score, many of them assumed it was a typo. BYU went from an undefeated team with a claim for a high Top 10 ranking to a team that grumbled about having been relegated to the Liberty Bowl, where it lost to Louisville 28-10 and concluded its season on a two-game losing skid.
Rolovich threw eight touchdowns, Chad Owens ran back a punt and a kickoff and 50,000 fans went wild.
After the game, Jones talked about the full house, the excitement in the stands, the full-on offensive assault and said, “This is what we’ve been working toward, this is the kind of thing we want to do here.”
Rolovich defers to the WAC title run in 1999 and other big wins when it is suggested that game may have been the tipping point for the program’s ensuing success in the Timmy Chang years, but what happened in 2001, especially in that last game when Rolovich closed out his senior season with an 8-1 record as a starter, was a flashpoint for the future.
And 15 years later all of that could possibly back into gear?
“Why not?,” he said. “We were pretty much pure Run and Shoot back then and the offenses today, when you look at them, you can’t really describe them anymore because they all just use what they need to use to fit the personnel, you know, some of this, some of that.
“But what June did that I intend to do, is really listen to the players, find out what they like, what they want to do more of, the kinds of things that bring out their personalities and build a team bond. That’s what we hope to do.”
You get the ideas that in time, Rolovich might speak more directly about his team, but after one spring practice, he isn’t there.
“It was enough to get some basic ideas about what guys can and can’t do,” he said, “but it was just a first look. I’ll know a lot more and have a better feel, one way or the other, after I see what they do over the summer.
“It’s like if you’re teaching your kid to surf,” he said, “you explain how it works, you get in there with them, you give the board a push, but it comes to a certain point where they have to do it; they have to stand up and ride the wave themselves. That’s where our guys are now, they need to stand up and show us what they learned.”
Summer is the proving ground for all college teams, that space on the calendar when the spring football tests yield to the summer workouts, the weight lifting, the cardio drills, the one-on-one passing tree routes and all the rest, that the coaches feel players must take seriously to get ready for fall practice.
“I can’t say how they’ll look when we get back together,” he said, “but it’s like one of my coaches said, ‘If they want to be a 2-11 team, they will have a 2-11 summer; if they want to be better, we’ll see it.’”
He said much of the offense has been installed and it start from a Run and Shoot base, but there will be plenty of RPO — run or pass option — for quarterbacks in the system, and that’s the tactical difference from the past. Rolovich wants a big, fast quarterback who can read downfield and run or throw it based on what the defense is allowing. It won’t look like the June Jones Rainbows on every play, but with any luck, it might resemble the results that were achieved on the scoreboard.
“We are in the business of looking,” Rolovich said. “Maybe there will be one from our state, we are concentrating our efforts on keeping the best players we have and each year, there are 15-18 that sign with D1 schools out of Hawaii.
This is a school that seriously recruits its home state, including the Big Island. Astotui Eli, from Kealakehe High School, is a good example. A freshman last year, Eli started last year as a center, one of only two freshman starters in the offensive line in the Mountain West Conference.
“Tell them to get their stuff together,” Rolovich said in response to a question about Big Island players interested in UH-Manoa, “don’t let grades or bad social decisions take away an opportunity.”
“We will never get all the local kids, some just want to leave for a while,” he said, “but if you can get some of the top ones and if you build that chip-on-the-shoulder approach and play aggressively and win some games, anything is possible.”
Even, he thinks, a return to glory.
(Contact Bart at barttribuneherald@gmail.com)