Picture pure joy.
It is on the face of a 55-year-old coach who still gets chicken skin in the days leading to a season-opening football game.
“No big deal,” deadpanned Todd Graham, when asked about the approach of his first game as the University of Hawaii football team’s head coach. After a chuckle, he declared, “man, I’m pumped. I’m fired up. I can’t wait. … There’s no one in the country, or anywhere, who can be more excited than I am to get back on the field and to get to do what I was born to do and love to do.”
After Graham parted ways with Arizona State — his fourth Division I head-coaching job — at the end of the 2017 season, he kept his promise to his wife to take off for the next year. Graham did consultancy work with some teams. The following year, he did not land the job that best fit. “Wound up being two years off,” Graham said.
Graham found the right match when he was hired to succeed Nick Rolovich, who resigned in January to become Washington State’s head coach.
“I wanted to find the right situation that fit me,” Graham said. “I’m a blue-collar guy. I came up that way. I tend to gravitate toward people who like to grind, like the physicality. … (The Rainbow Warriors) embrace that. I like the blue-collar mentality of these guys.”
As the Warriors’ CEO, Graham has led the expansion of the offense and reconstruction of the defense while emphasizing the basics of fewer penalties and elimination of neural-flatulent plays.
Graham also made each player pledge allegiance in writing. “We talk about what the commitment is in the classroom, the commitment in the community, the commitment to their teammates, the commitment on the field,” Graham said of the components listed on a sign hanging outside the locker room. “They actually sign it. You notice when I sign it, I sign it ‘T. Graham.’ I don’t even sign it ‘Todd.’ ‘Todd’ is the most insignificant thing about my name. The most significant thing about my name is ‘Graham.’ I talk to them about representing something bigger than yourself. That’s why it’s important you have integrity, you have character, that you serve, and want to sacrifice for each other. It’s big team, little me.”
Soon after being hired in January, Graham asked each player to put a picture of an inspirational person in his locker. “Some mom, some dad, some grandma or grandpa, some coach sacrificed so they could become a Division I football player,” Graham said.
Because of safety and health protocol, the Warriors have not entered the locker room since March. But when restrictions are lifted, Graham said, he will implement a procedure he has used at previous schools.
“We’ll blow a whistle three times and stand at attention, and we’ll stare at that picture,” Graham said. “Every day we’ll look at the picture of the person who put you here. Everything we do today, we do it to honor those people.”
Graham introduced a championship belt that is awarded to the offense or defense based on the unit’s performance in practice.
“I’m a UFC guy,” Graham said. “I like ‘Rampage’ and Forrest Griffin and ‘The Iceman,’ Chuck Liddell. My wife says I shouldn’t tell people that, but I like the UFC. To me, it’s the TTH (‘tougher than hell’) belt. Every day we want to compete. We compete in every drill every day in practice. At the end of the day, there’s a winner and a loser. Too often today, that’s de-emphasized. We want to emphasize the importance of that. Every day in life you win or you don’t. There’s not any middle ground. Not everybody is getting a ribbon around here. We want to compete to win.”
