I hate to close out a “Best Of” issue with a “worst,” but there’s no way around it. The single worst thing about 2022 in Baltimore sports is that we won’t have Ken Niumatalolo around moving forward.
The Naval Academy made its decision and hopefully bright days are ahead for the program. But it will be (nearly) impossible to match the totality of the last 15 years under Niumatalolo’s guidance. It’s somehow bigger than the numbers, which is really amazing when you consider the numbers are 109 wins, 10 bowl appearances, three division titles, three AAC Coach of the Year awards, six bowl wins, six Commander-in-Chief’s Trophies and 10 wins against Army.
And that doesn’t remotely begin to define the man’s legacy.
“He was like a perfect fit in what you would want as a head coach for Navy,” former Mids quarterback Ricky Dobbs told me the day after Navy announced it had moved on from Niumatalolo. “He helped groom us to be better men on the football field and in the military.”
“The men he’s mentored, obviously the things that he taught went beyond football,” former Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds added on that same day. “It wasn’t just how to play better on the field. It was how to be a better officer, how to be a better man, husband, father. He exemplified all of those things.”
Perhaps no tribute was more fitting than prolific former Army quarterback Trent Steelman.
“I’d let him coach my boys every day of the week and twice on Saturdays,” Steelman tweeted. “A true competitor but the most humble servant. You are legend, @NavyCoachKen! You changed the way the college football (sic) views the service academies. You will be missed!”
Ten years earlier, it was Niumatalolo who came to console an emotional Steelman after a late Reynolds touchdown clinched a fourth and final loss to Navy for the decorated Army quarterback. It was a beautiful moment within the greatest rivalry in sports. It was a display of humanity unlike much of anything we get to see within the sport.
More than anything else, it was so quintessentially Ken Niumatalolo.
That’s the painful part of thinking about Navy football post-Niumatalolo. It would be one thing if we were simply talking about a successful coach. There are lots of successful coaches in college football. We’re talking about a highly successful coach who just so happened to also truly be one of the greatest leaders of men we’ve seen in the modern era of the sport.
There is a saying along the lines of, “If you drew up exactly what you’d want in a __________, you’d be drawing up ___________.” It would be easy to say, “If you drew up exactly what you’d want in a coach, you’d be drawing up Ken Niumatalolo.” But if we’re being truthful, such a standard is implausible even within the concept of finding a perfect scenario. You couldn’t fathom finding someone so dedicated to a group of young men (young men who just so happen to be moving into leadership roles within our nation’s military) and yet also so wildly successful on the football field.
It’s an unreasonable standard to set. And yet it was the standard here for a decade and a half.
I was fortunate to share regular conversations with Ken Niumatalolo during his tenure at Navy. I truly admired the impact he had as a leader and tried to soak up as much as I could from our conversations. We would often record conversations to air on Glenn Clark Radio, but we would spend 10-15 minutes on either side of the recording just chatting about life, family and football.
Niumatalolo provided invaluable perspective that helped influence me as a man, a boss and a father. He helped fortify my belief that empathy was a reflection of strength, not weakness. He reminded me of the value of accountability. During an era in which extreme defensiveness regularly blurs with gaslighting, Ken Niumatalolo took responsibility and ownership of every aspect of the program … even those he truly had no control over. He was quick to deflect criticism of a player upon himself.
My reverence for the man is as overwhelming as his success was in his job.
I’m appreciative of what he did for Navy football. I’m far more appreciative of what he did for the men who are serving and protecting my family and me. We have been so extremely fortunate to have a man of his character and ability at the helm in Annapolis.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox
Issue 278: December 2022 / January 2023
Originally published Dec. 21, 2022