Washington State University announced at a press conference Monday evening that they were firing head football coach Nick Rolovich and four of his assistants (Ricky Logo, John Richardson, Craig Stutzmann, and Mark Weber) for refusing to comply with COVID protocols. Rolovich, 42, was in the midst of a contract which paid him more than $3M annually which ran through 2025. As a result, he was technically the highest paid state employee in all of Washington.
Governor Jay Inslee had set a hard deadline of Oct 18th for all state employees to be vaccinated, something that Rolovich and his staffers appeared to initially indicate they would comply with when it was announced in August. Evidently their tunes changed as the deadline approached, though Rolovich declined to provide any rationale for his anti-vax stance over the past few weeks.
WSU athletic director Pat Chun told members of the media that Rolovich’s noncompliance with this requirement rendered him ineligible to be employed at Washington State University and therefore could no longer fulfill his duties as a head coach. He would go on to add that the real losers in all of this were the student athletes who would suddenly be without most of their coaching staff.
Adding insult to injury, Chun confirmed that WSU would be terminating Rolovich “for cause” for failure to comply with the terms of his contract, meaning he would not be paid out the remainder of his deal.
In the aftermath, defensive coordinator Jake Dickert has been named interim head coach by the university. After starting the season 1-3, WSU is currently riding a 3 game winning streak and sits a few games back of division leading Oregon in the Pac-12 North. Washington State plays host to BYU (5-2) this weekend at Martin Stadium.