Nick Rolovich
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 2-2
2016Hawaii BowlW 52-35
2018Hawaii BowlL 14-31
2019Hawaii BowlW 38-34
California
2025Hawaii BowlL 31-35
Fans
No fan talk about him on our list yet. His record is on Career.
Stats
Big games
Pick a job to see its years on their own.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
2-2 against his rivals at Hawai'i. Winless in 3 tries against Bryan Harsin.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
2-2 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Bryan Harsin.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
ATS is his record against the spread: did his team beat the closing betting line, winning by more than it or losing by less? Lines start in 2013; a dash means fewer than 6 of those games had one. One-score games carry no spread record: a big favorite that wins a close game has almost always failed to cover, so that number would say nothing about the coach.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Passed more than the situation called for under Harsin.
143 run and pass snaps at California, 2025–2025, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Five numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His one ranked Washington State class of his own finished #60 nationally.
Hawai'i
Washington StateAcross every program: 3 ranked classes of his own, averaging #90 nationally.
His class — he had the full signing cycleTransition — he was hired mid-cycle
Rank is each signing class’s national recruiting rank (#1 is best). Only a class he had a full signing cycle to build counts as his; inherited and mid-transition classes still show here, faded, but stay out of the average.
Followed him here
Hawai'i→Washington State2020Players who transferred from his old program to his new one through the portal in the same year he made the move. Name-matching across data sources misses some, so every count is a floor, not an exact number.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2025 roster arrived on his watch — 114 of 114 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 32% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his Hawai'i rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2016–2019). In the three seasons before he arrived, Hawai'i’s line averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average.
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 11 of 18 signees (61%) across his 2025–2025 tenure, drawn from 6 states in all. Next: HI (2).
67% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (AZ 1).
- median hometown distance
- 647 mi
- within 100 mi
- 20%
- within 500 mi
- 42%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 43%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
News
No outlet on our list has written about him by name yet. His record is on Career.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
Followed Justin Wilcox (2017–2025) · succeeded by Tosh Lupoi (2026–now).
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
A typical class-year mix of incoming transfers.
Followed Mike Leach (2012–2019) · succeeded by Jake Dickert (2021–2024).
| Season | 2020 | 2021 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||
| Record | 1-3 | 4-3 | |
| Postseason | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||
| OC | Brian Smith / Craig Stutzmann | Craig Stutzmann / Brian Smith | |
| DC | Jake Dickert | Jake Dickert | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||
| Offense | 27 | 56 | |
| Defense | 26 | 60 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||
| 1st-down pass% | 54.6 | 52.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 52.2 | 49.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 30.0 | 50.0 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
Barely touches the portal — recruits and develops his own.
Brings in smaller-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
2 NFL Draft picks: Abraham Lucas (2022), Jaylen Watson (2022)
12th-best Hawai'i tenure of 12 by the numbers.
Followed Norm Chow (2012–2015) · succeeded by Todd Graham (2020–2021).
| Season | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 7-7 | 3-9 | 8-6 | 10-5 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | — | L bowl | W bowl | |
| Coordinators | |||||
| OC | Brian Smith | Brian Smith | Brian Smith | Brian Smith | |
| DC | Kevin Lempa | Legi Suiaunoa | Corey Batoon | Corey Batoon | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 64 | 30 | 49 | 93 | |
| Defense | 11 | 5 | 18 | 19 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 41.4 | 44.6 | 56.3 | 63.2 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 37.1 | 46.1 | 58.8 | 53.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 48.3 | 48.6 | 55.1 | 39.5 | |
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
3 NFL Draft picks: Jahlani Tavai (2019), John Ursua (2019), Cole McDonald (2020)
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+0.1 pts at Hawai'i · #676 of 1290 · middle half