Two weeks into his tenure as the Washington State football head coach, and Nick Rolovich is filling his first staff in Pullman at a relatively rapid pace.
Thursday evening, Wazzu announced that Rolovich has hired Michael Ghobrial to be the Cougars’ special teams coordinator. Ghobrial and Rolovich have a recent working relationship as the former was on the latter’s staff at Hawaii.
“Michael is a high-level motivator, he coaches with great passion for football and brings energy to everything he does whether it’s in his meeting rooms and on the field,” the Washington State football coach said in a statement. “Michael is always working to improve his craft, he did a great job in recruiting the pacific northwest for us at Hawaii and has experience in this conference after he played and started his coaching career at UCLA.”
The past two seasons, Ghobrial was the special teams coordinator at Hawaii. That was Ghobrial’s first on-field job at the FBS level. He’s also held on-field roles at Tarleton State (2016-17) and Colorado Mesa (2015).
As noted in Rolovich’s statement, Ghobrial, who was a defensive end for UCLA from 2006-07, began his coaching career as a quality control coach for his alma mater in 2011. In 2012-13, Ghobrial was a graduate assistant who worked with special teams and the defensive line.
In 2014, he was a graduate assistant at Syracuse. At that stop, he helped out with the defensive line.
With Ghobrial’s addition, Rolovich has now assembled six of his 10 on-field assistants. The others are:
- Jake Dickert, defensive coordinator (HERE)
- A.J. Cooper, defensive ends (HERE)
- Ricky Logo, defensive tackles (HERE)
- John Richardson, cornerbacks (HERE)
- Mark Banker, safeties (HERE)
Banker and Logo both coached with Rolovich at Hawaii.
As you may have noticed, Rolovich has yet to add any assistants on the offensive side of the football. Rolovich’s entire collegiate coaching career has been either as an offensive coordinator or quarterbacks coach.
