Nick Rolovich termination exposes hypocrisy of college football coaches

Coaches preach sacrifice and demand selflessness from their players. As Nick Rolovich showed by refusing to vaccinate, sacrifice is often a one-way street.

On Saturday, Washington State head football coach Nick Rolovich coached what proved to be his last game for Washington State. As the Cougars took down Stanford, the team doused their head coach in a Gatorade shower and celebrated the move above .500 in the standings.

Two days later, the celebrations turned cold as Washington State University terminated Rolovich on Monday evening. His crime was not losing too many football games — there was not enough time to assess how Rolovich was performing as the leader of the Cougars after less than a full season’s worth of games in charge.

Less than two years into his tenure in Pullman, Rolovich looked to have things on an upswing in 2021, sitting at 4-3 this year after going 1-3 in a truncated 2020 season.

But Rolovich made the choice to refuse vaccination against COVID-19. After Washington governor Jay Inslee issued a proclamation on Aug. 9 that required all state employees to vaccinate, a deadline of Oct. 18 was set for all state employees to vaccinate or risk termination with cause. Legal challenges failed to rescind the mandate before the deadline, and Rolovich is now out of a job that made him the second-highest paid state employee behind only Washington coach Jimmy Lake.

After already sacrificing $181,250 in pandemic-related pay cuts, Nick Rolovich now loses everything that was on the table. In taking his personal stand against vaccination to its logical finish, Nick Rolovich forfeited his $3 million annual salary — not to mention a $4.3 million buyout after the state university fired him with cause.

In addition to Rolovich, four other Washington State assistant coaches were also terminated after refusing to comply with the mandate. Co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Craig Stutzmann (annual salary: $485,000), offensive line coach Mark Weber ($350,000) assistant head coach/recruiting coordinator/cornerbacks coach John Richardson ($325,000), and defensive line coach Ricky Logo ($310,000) all chose to take walking papers over a free jab, creating a massive hole in the coaching staff at a pivotal point in Washington State’s season.

Stepping in as the interim head coach in Pullman is defensive coordinator Jake Dickert as the Cougars try to patch together the back half of the season. Dickert received his second course of the COVID-19 vaccination in May.

Dickert rightly noted in May that “we all have a choice” as to whether to get vaccinated. In a pandemic, though, personal decisions have ramifications that extend beyond one’s own physical presence.

Viruses care nothing about politics, but their impact can be mitigated through medical interventions. Rolovich and his four assistants opted to place their personal decisions above the football team, and they paid a hefty financial price for those decisions.

But the impact goes far beyond the bank accounts of Rolovich, Weber, Stutzmann, Logo, and Richardson that will no longer receive cash infusions from Washington State University. These five coaches have undoubtedly sat in front of position groups and full rosters and preached a common football doctrine about individual sacrifice in the interest of collective achievement. They have spent countless hours demanding accountability from their players and asking that they subsume their personal desires for bigger goals.

Rolovich, Weber, Stutzmann, Logo, and Richardson all failed to practice what they preached. As students at Washington State, every Cougars football player has already been required for months to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. None of these five coaches felt it necessary to afford the same courtesy to the young men entrusted to their training.

In the press conference after Saturday’s win, wide receiver Travell Harris gushed about his soon-to-be-former head coach. “It means a lot to have a coach who is a players’ coach,” Harris said in defense of Rolovich. “He’s an outstanding coach and he’s a coach that we all love to play for, and we honor him.” In return, Rolovich apparently refrained from even meeting with the team to say goodbyes in person.

What the Rolovich story exposes is not a polar political divide in the United States or even the courage of religious convictions. Rolovich and his assistants instead demonstrated how coaches too often demand levels of sacrifice from their players that they are wholly unwilling to demand of themselves. These coaches backed up their refusal to vaccinate by sacrificing their paychecks, but Rolovich and the other departed coaches ultimately sacrificed their players’ season as much as they did their own physical and financial health.

Instead of making a simple sacrifice for the good of their program, Rolovich privileged his own feelings at the expense of the collective good of the team. In the process, he hung his former players out to dry. Now Dickert and the remaining vaccinated coaches are left to pick up the pieces as the Cougars head into the homestretch of their season with a skeleton crew on the sideline.