When University of Hawaii football coach Nick Rolovich looked around at the Mountain West Conference Football Media Summit Tuesday in Las Vegas, his peer group had changed significantly from last year.
When University of Hawaii football coach Nick Rolovich looked around at the Mountain West Conference Football Media Summit Tuesday in Las Vegas, his peer group had changed significantly from last year.
After just one season as a head coach, Rolovich has shot up to third in seniority in the six-team West Division. He trails only San Diego State’s Rocky Long, starting his seventh season, and Nevada-Las Vegas’ Tony Sanchez, beginning his third.
There are now new faces at three division members, Fresno State, Nevada and San Jose State — the biggest single-season turnover in the division format — and it is not a stretch to think UH contributed to helping to put some of them there.
In a sense, what Rolovich did in his inaugural year of a 7-7 record and a Hawaii Bowl victory was not only wake up the Rainbow Warriors but stir the lackluster division.
It is probably not a pure coincidence that change came at two of them after losing to UH. (Fresno State fired head coach Tim DeRuyter four weeks prior to its season-ending defeat by Hawaii.)
In the case of Nevada, Rolovich came back and immediately beat a school he had been the offense coordinator at just 11 months before. Then, the next week, UH defeated San Jose State with a quarterback, Dru Brown, culled from a junior college, the College of San Mateo, smack dab in in the Spartans’ backyard.
The reversal of fortunes did not go unnoticed, prompting some MWC members to action. You got the feeling that if Rolovich could inspire such an immediate turnaround of fortunes at UH, which had suffered five consecutive losing seasons, then the schools that the Rainbow Warriors had defeated felt they were in danger of falling behind.
That was something the brethren in the MWC’s weaker division could not ignore. So, in addition to ushering out old coaches and bringing in the new staffs, the schools have pumped more money into their head coaching position, assistant coaching salaries and have planned facilities improvements. “I do think there is a little bit of that,” Rolovich said of the catch-up mode.
It was a little different than 1992 when UH woke up an entire conference with its rebound from a 4-7-1 record by going 11-2. After the ‘Bows won a share of the then-Western Athletic Conference title and the Holiday Bowl, other conference members quickly put more into their programs. The message being: Hey, if Hawaii can, we can, too.
Problem was when the competition sought to match Hawaii, UH was unable to keep up and it would be seven more seasons before the ‘Bows had picked themselves back up and posted a winning record or saw the postseason again.
So, for the 2017 season, UH is bracing for the best shots Nevada, San Jose and Fresno State have to offer. “I think they all are going to have renewed energy (with new coaches),” Rolovich said. “Kinda like us last year, right? We got the new energy started, people started to believe and we pulled off a couple of wins. It is really about believing in leadership and winning. And, it is our job to stunt that growth when we play them.”
As for the ‘Bows, Rolovich said, hopefully, “We’ll win some more games and people in the state will find decent value in our program.”
Because the competition in the MWC has signaled through an offseason of change that it already has.