Ferd Lewis: Rolo’s move to Wazzu should not be a surprise

Nick Rolovich — our “Rolo” — off to coach football at Washington State? Pride Rock to the Palouse?

Of course.

Anybody who is surprised by Monday night’s development — and we’re guessing that probably included a lot of folks at a university in Manoa — hasn’t been paying attention to the past four years.

The moment that Mike Leach packed his cowbells for Mississippi State on Thursday, this opening and at this time had Rolo written all over it in bold letters.

As one of Rolovich’s better friends and advisers put it in a text Thursday morning, “If his (Rolo’s) agent isn’t looking into it, I would encourage Nick to get a new agent.”

Suffice to say, Rolovich still has that agent and the Cougs have a new coach.

Let’s be clear here, Rolo’s heart was in Hawaii and that “Live Aloha, Play Warrior” he brought with him was genuine. From the moment he went into coaching as a student assistant at UH in 2003, you knew Rolovich would end up someday being the head coach at his alma mater.

It just came a little sooner (2016) than many first imagined. And, so, too, now does his departure.

Rolo at this stage of his career just simply out-grew UH. What he did with the nearly moribund football program he took over was remarkable. He took an outfit that had won a total of 11 games in four seasons to three bowls and 28 victories in four seasons.

And he did it by installing an exciting brand of football that caught people’s attention, Aloha Stadium turnstiles excepted. Even Ben Jay’s buddy, Wazzu athletic director Pat Chun in far off Pullman, Wash.

Rolo needed to spread his wings and tackle a mightier challenge and, for somebody who grew up in the shadow of the Pac-12 in the Bay Area, that league is it.

Whether he can lift the Cougs back to a Rose Bowl is a good question. But Rolo is always up for a challenge, whether it be throwing footballs into a plastic garbage bin from 30 yards, as he liked to do after practice with his quarterbacks, or building up a lagging program.

It was going to be hard for UH to ever pay Rolo a real market price salary that doubles or even triples his current $600,004, much less the reported quintupling Washington State is doing. UH was straining to even cough up what it was.

Much less come up with charter flights or cost of attendance stipends for players like some other schools UH competes against. Over the years Rolo would just shrug his shoulders and say those limitations came with the job. But he wasn’t happy about it.

Nor was it ever — in his lifetime, at least — going to be able to slap up the kind of football operations center he dreamed of behind the grass practice fields. The money just isn’t there and, to be honest about it, neither was the will or the expertise to go about raising it.

If you’re Rolo, you look at a 2020 UH schedule that has you playing at Oregon and at Arizona plus a couple of breathers at home against UCLA and Boise State and this probably looks like a good time to go. Especially when your quarterback, Cole McDonald, is headed out the door.

Ten-win seasons like that of 2019 don’t come around very often at UH and with some of the upcoming schedules, who knew when the next one would be or how UH might get there.

Or who the coach might be when it did.

Now, we just know that it won’t be Rolo.

But surprised? We shouldn’t be.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.