Nick Rolovich, the former Washington State head coach who was fired for cause in 2021 for failing to comply with the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, has joined the offensive staff at Cal, head coach Justin Wilcox announced on Friday.
Rolovich, 45, will be a senior offensive assistant for the Bears. It’s first college football coaching job since his dismissal at Washington State on Oct. 18, 2021.
Join us in welcoming Senior Offensive Assistant Nick Rolovich to Bear Territory 👏🐻
🔗: https://t.co/FKfAqotnn7#GoBears | #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/mW9J0GpqFI
— Cal Football (@CalFootball) December 13, 2024
Rolovich went 33-33 in six years as a head coach, four at Hawaii (2016-19) and two at Washington State (2020-21). He established a reputation as a successful offensive coach and helped turn around a struggling Hawaii program in his four years there, getting them to 10-5 and earning Mountain West Coach of the Year honors in 2019 before taking over at Wazzu before the 2020 season.
But his career came to a halt in his second year at Washington State after his dispute with the school over the state’s vaccine mandate, which applied to K-12 and higher education employees. He applied for a religious exemption to the mandate, which was denied, and he was later fired along with four assistant coaches. In 2022, Rolovich filed a lawsuit against the school, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Pat Chun, who was Washington State’s athletic director at the time of Rolovich’s firing.
In 2023, a federal judge ruled that Rolovich could not sue Inslee and Chun and granted a motion to dismiss the two from the case as defendants. The case against Washington State is still pending.
Since his departure from Washington State, Rolovich volunteered with a Bay Area high school football program in 2022 and in 2023 was hired as the offensive coordinator of the UFL’s Seattle Sea Dragons. But that team was discontinued when the XFL and UFL merged ahead of the 2024 season.
Rolovich is from the Bay Area and was a two-time junior college All-American quarterback at City College of San Francisco in 1998 and 1999. He is the third new addition to Cal’s offensive staff since Wilcox made a coordinator change on Dec. 3. The Bears hired former Auburn and Boise State head coach Bryan Harsin as offensive coordinator on Tuesday and former Utah State offensive coordinator Kyle Cefalo as receivers coach and passing game coordinator.
(Photo: William Mancebo / Getty Images)
