HONOLULU — The 2024 season was one of Ken Niumatalolo’s most enjoyable in a college football coaching career spanning 35 of them.
But before he could represent San Jose State on the Hawaii Bowl introductory press conference dais at The Royal Hawaiian on a sunny Friday morning, Diamond Head glistening in the distance across Waikiki Bay, Niumatalolo had to fly home for a much different reason.
He traveled to Oahu from the Bay Area to see his ailing father, Simi Niumatalolo, on Saturday. His siblings on the continent did the same.
“I came last week, knowing that we (San Jose State) would be here on Thursday. I didn’t want to take a chance,” Niumatalolo said. “So I was just here to pay my final respects before he passed away.”
It was the right decision. Simi Niumatalolo, a U.S. Coast Guard veteran and a retired restaurant manager at the Polynesian Cultural Center, died on Monday. He was 91.
A few days later, and with a few days left to prepare for South Florida on Christmas Eve, Niumatalolo expressed gratitude in an interview with Spectrum News. For the opportunity to play a postseason game in his first year at San Jose State, yes, but also for the man who taught him a way of being that has endeared him to many.
Just two Decembers ago, Niumatalolo, the winningest coach in U.S. Naval Academy program history — someone who beat Army his first eight years on the job — was told he was fired in the locker room immediately following a double-overtime loss in the Army-Navy game.
Yet the North Shore native took to social media last Saturday to congratulate the Midshipmen and coach Brian Newberry, his replacement and former defensive coordinator, on their 31-13 thumping of the Black Knights.
It generated many responding messages of respect on X, a platform not known for courteous discourse, as did Niumatalolo’s tribute to his father three days later.
The Spartans (7-5) fell short of a Hawaii Bowl win under coach Brent Brennan last year, falling 24-14 to Coastal Carolina in quarterback Chevan Cordeiro’s final collegiate game. The Spartans made it back with a new offense — not Niumatalolo’s triple option he inherited from Paul Johnson, but Craig Stutzmann’s potent “spread and shred” attack. Receiver Nick Nash was named SJSU’s first consensus All-American on Thursday.
Niumatalolo was a willing delegator and eager to learn something new, Stutzmann said during SJSU’s announcement of its Hawaii Bowl return.
Niumatalolo, while still on staff at UCLA last December, was invited to attend a SJSU Hawaii Bowl practice just down the road from his Manoa home as he contemplated his next move.
He said Friday that if he had any choice of a postseason game, the Hawaii Bowl would be it, outside of College Football Playoff participation.
Niumatalolo, a former University of Hawaii quarterback out of Radford High, played in the first bowl game in UH history, the Jeep Eagle Aloha Bowl on Christmas of 1989, a 33-13 loss to Michigan State at sold-out Aloha Stadium.
He came on in relief of starter Garrett Gabriel and was promptly concussed and intercepted on a hit by All-America linebacker Percy Snow.
“It took a while (to recover),” Niumatalolo said with a laugh. “It’s kind of funny, after all these years, all I remember is the concussion.”
He’s made sure to follow every bowl game played in Hawaii since, especially once the Hawaii Bowl emerged as a successor to the Aloha and Oahu bowls on or around Christmas Eves starting in 2002.
Asked if Simi had a guiding hand in his football career, Niumatalolo replied with a resounding yes — though not in the sense one might expect.
“My parents, my dad and my mom, have everything to do with the way I coach,” he said. “When I became a head football coach in (2007), I didn’t know anything about how to be a head coach. So, all I did was rely on former coaches, Coach (John) Velasco from Radford, Coach (Dick) Tomey, Coach (Bob) Wagner from University of Hawaii. All my coaches. Coach (Paul) Johnson.
“But my dad, from a leadership standpoint just in how he did things, it all stemmed from him. How to treat people. How to love people. Create a family culture of love, and that stemmed from my background. My father.”
Simi Niumatalolo came to Hawaii with his father from American Samoa in the 1950s. He joined the Coast Guard, a career that required frequent moves, and took his own family with him, to New York, Oakland, Calif., and Astoria, Ore.
They came back to Hawaii in 1972, when Ken was 7. The family lived in Red Hill and Halawa for a time until Simi got a job at Polynesian Cultural Center as a cook.
Laie would become a true home, and his profession a true labor of love.
“He’d cater for 500 people and cook these big weddings, just him and my mom and my siblings and relatives, and he’d charge very minimal,” Niumatalolo said. “He was in the background, nobody knew what he did.”
At any team hotel stay, or any big team banquets like the kind the Spartans will enjoy leading up to Tuesday’s 3 p.m. kickoff at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex, Niumatalolo makes it a point to call upon the establishment’s food service employees before the stay is over and thank them.
Once, he said, he had a player ask why they do it.
He had the same answer then to a different question Friday on how he will proceed in the Hawaii Bowl in the wake of his father’s passing.
“He’ll always be on my mind,” Niumatalolo said. “Everything that I do is trying to be a reflection of him.”
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.