RichRod would be wise to tap Polynesian pipeline during coaching search
Washington State’s Mike Leach, the Pac-12 football Coach of the Year, has surrounded himself with those who helped Mike Stoops rebuild Arizona’s program and play in three consecutive bowl games between 2008-10.
Dave Emerick is WSU’s “chief of staff.” Brian Odom is the Cougars’ defensive quality control leader. Dave Nichol is Wazzu’s outside receivers coach.
And Joe Salave’a, who hoped to be on Rich Rodriguez’s first UA staff but was bypassed for RichRod’s long time defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich, is now a rock star in Pullman.
Salave’a last week became the first assistant football coach in WSU history to receive a multi-year contract. His salary was bumped from $325,000 to about $400,000. He has the title of assistant head coach.
When the Cougars won the Sun Bowl, seven of the 12 leading tacklers were recruits with Polynesian heritage: Darryl Paulo, Robert Barber, Destiny Vaeao, Frankie Luvu, Shalom Luani, Hercules Mata’afa and Daniel Ekuale.
If it desires, Arizona could probably get Salave’a back to his alma mater. It would take about $500,000 a year, the first-ever multi-year contract for a UA football coach, a title, and a commitment to re-work Arizona’s recruiting philosophy, hitting it hard in American Samoa, Hawaii and the Polynesian pipeline to which Salave’a has few peers.
If not, at least WSU has provided a blueprint for what works in the Pac-12 for teams not named Stanford or USC.
Does RichRod need to hire a big-name defensive coordinator? No. WSU hired 35-year-old Alex Grinch, a safeties coach at Missouri. He had never been a coordinator. But he worked in sync with Salave’a and with Leach’s offense-comes-first approach, and the Cougars were a revelation in 2015.
RichRod will have a dozen good possibilities in his search to replace Jeff Casteel and Kirelawich. He couldn’t go wrong by hiring Mike Tuiasosopo, who coached at USC in 2015, UCLA in 2014 and at Colorado for two seasons after leaving Arizona in 2010. Stoops replaced him with Salave’a.
Tuiasosopo never got much credit for Arizona’s rise under Stoops, but he personally landed quarterback Wilie Tuitama, who changed the UA’s trajectory. He cultivated a Polynesian connection that thrived. When Tuiasosopo left for Colorado, the Wildcats had nine Polynesian players, including Sione Tuihalamaka and Taimi Tutogi.
The UA’s Polynesian connection has mostly gone dry. Anu Solomon, Derek Turituri and Freddie Tagaloa are the only notable players expected to suit up this fall.
On Friday night, Salave’a and longtime UA defensive (and offensive) coordinator Duane Akina, now the secondary coach at Stanford, were in Los Angeles for the Polynesian All-American Bowl.
That’s where it’s at if you’re not in the SEC or the Big Ten and recruiting the fertile South and Midwestern turf.
