Navy Man
Ken Niumatalolo, the first Samoan to lead a major football program, comes home as Navy’s head coach
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When Ken Niumatalolo was summoned to an Annapolis-area McDonald’s by his boss, then Navy head coach Charlie Weatherbie following the 1998 football season, the second-year offensive coordinator and Radford alum arrived excited to talk about the upcoming season over a burger and fries. Instead, he left not with a Happy Meal but with a pink slip. He was fired - not in an on-campus office, but in a public place better known for the dollar menu and kiddie fun zones than a location to dump unwanted employees.
A decade later, what was once a symbol of rejection - and a thoroughly bizarre location to handle a personnel matter - has come to represent perseverance for the current Navy head coach, and a place to reflect on the challenges and redemptive qualities that make coaching a business like no other.
“I see the McDonald’s a lot. It puts things in perspective for me - to never forget what could happen if you don’t do things right,” says the coach, who admits his termination was based partly on having a very different personality from his boss.
Niumatalolo - or coach Niumat to players and Coach Ken to everyone else in Annapolis unaccustomed to such a linguistically challenging surname - is in his second full season as head coach of the Midshipmen, and is headed for a showdown Saturday night with his alma mater in the very stadium in which he played, coached and once sold game-day newspapers.
Needless to say, it’s going to be a special contest for the visiting coach and a big deal for the University of Hawaii as it hosts its annual Military Night in honor of the state’s military community.
“That game is going to be pretty emotional,” says Niumatalolo. “When I was home this summer I was thinking about it, and it’s going to be weird. I remember games when I was growing up. I would sell newspapers, then go stand over by the locker room where players are coming out and trying to get chin straps or their wristbands. I know it will be an emotional game.”
The contest versus UH won’t be the only one evoking memories. On Dec. 12, the Midshipmen take on the Cadets from Army, coached by Rich Ellerson, the very person who recruited Niumatalolo to UH and whose spot he took on the Rainbow coaching roster when Ellerson left for Arizona.
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Niumatalolo’s career on the sidelines began at the suggestion of former Rainbows offensive coordinator and now Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson. The team had an opening for a graduate assistant, and Johnson told his former QB he’d discuss the subject with head coach Bob Wagner, if Niumatalolo was interested. The offer wasn’t an easy sell to the recently married family man. Graduate assistants work for below-minimum wage, and the newlyweds had bills to pay. Taking the job would mean his wife, Barbara, who was working in a doctor’s office, would be the family’s primary breadwinner. After careful consideration, the pair took a leap of faith and decided to devote two years to coaching. If no permanent position became available, he would enter the “real world” job market. It would-n’t be the last time the family took a risk, and it paid off. Except for that brief time after Weatherbie gave him the boot in the shadow of the golden arches, he’s never had to worry about a paycheck.
Four years after making the jump from player to coach, and two years after being named a full-time assistant at UH, the Niumatalolos again took a risk. Johnson accepted the job as Navy’s new offensive coordinator and he offered a spot to his young protege. As before, the decision wasn’t easy.
“I was working full time at Hawaii, and when Coach Wagner hired me I thought I’d gone to heaven, that I wasn’t going anywhere ... I was going to coach there as long as I could and I wasn’t going to leave home. So when he (Johnson) first offered me the job to come here and coach the running backs in ‘95, it was, for myself and my wife, getting out of our comfort zone to come to the East Coast. But it was something that just felt right.”
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The decision was correct not just for the coach but also for the academy. During his tenure as an assistant under Johnson and now as head coach, Navy has moved from a program hoping to compete against schools not hampered by stringent academic and military requirements to one that expects to win on a weekly basis. As the leader, Niumatalolo is the first Navy coach to lead his team to a bowl game and the second to beat both Army and Air Force in his first year on the job. His eight wins a year ago were the most by a rookie Navy coach since 1934. He also is the first Samoan collegiate head coach at any level. It’s a landmark that comes with both pride and pressure.
“The pressure is part of the profession,” he says. “Whether you are Samoan, white, black - the pressure is always there. This is a bottom-line profession. Either you win or else. That’s basically what it comes down to. You have to produce. The pressure hasn’t changed, but I’m definitely proud of the fact that I’m one of the few Polynesians who are head coaches, and hopefully I can be successful so that others will have that opportunity because there are a lot of great Polynesian coaches out there.”
But more important than bowl games, breaking a barrier or even beating Notre Dame - which he did for the second time in three years, at South Bend - is beating Army while maintaining the stranglehold on the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.
“My first year after we lost (to Army), I was thinking, coming into this game, that the biggest rivalry game I’d been in was the BYU-Hawaii game. But after being in that game, it wasn’t even close. There are not too many games you go to where the whole student body from both schools are at the game. And all the people the game has implications on ... for that one day they are stopping to either watch it on TV or listen to it on the radio, wherever they are in the country and the world serving us, so it’s a pretty big deal.”
Navy has won the trophy so often of late - six in a row to go with 13 straight victories over the other academies - that the Midshipmen’s annual trip to the White House has become a Forrest Gump-type of affair where they get to go to the White House again and meet the president again. But while the trip wore on the cinematic Army veteran, it retains special meaning for the Navy coach.
“We’ve been there a few times now. It was great to meet President Obama and have somebody give you the shaka sign. It’s always great to go there, but to meet somebody like President Obama, the leader of the free world who also grew up in Hawaii, is real special. It’s a great honor for us and it’s our goal to go every year.”
While the Army/Navy game is no longer the biggest game on the college football calendar in terms of impact on the national title, it remains a hard-fought and uniquely respectful rivalry. Niumatalolo, the son of a retired Coast Guard chief petty officer, says the common bond of service supersedes ego and misguided school pride.
“There is a great love and respect for each other. These
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