PULLMAN, Wash. — Nick Rolovich is definitely not the Grinch.
He's someone who fully embraces the holiday season, mostly because he says he loves making it special for his children.
He decided to kick it off with a bang this year and spice up the football coaches’ offices for Halloween.
"I want our players to feel like they can come around in meetings and keep them on their toes. I thought the GAs and quality control, all the minions, did a nice job decorating. It was fun," said Rolovich on his current digs.
One of the biggest features of the Cougs' spooky set up is a graveyard with tombstones of all the Pac-12 teams. There is one thing in that graveyard though that stands out: UW's gravestone, which is bigger than any of the others. Rolovich freely admits that this is intentional.
"I understand that it’s 60 minutes, it’s still eleven people on each side, but I think what it means to the alums and students and faculty at each school, I think it’s good to celebrate it," said Rolovich of the Apple Cup.
The former Hawaii head coach has also told his team scary stories in the past during Halloween. He says he doesn’t plan to do that with his team this year, but it’s definitely something he enjoys doing when he can.
"I turn the lights out, do the old campfire flashlight trick, and have a microphone and read from different books. The shock on their face as soon as that happens is pretty fun for me to see because they have no idea what’s coming," he said.
As mentioned earlier, he’s big on all holidays.
He has a Thanksgiving day tradition that’s, well, we'll let him explain how it began.
"I think my dad may have brought a turkey suit. My dad does a lot of fun stuff like that. We had pop guns on Thanksgiving. I think one time I was running down the street and my kids were chasing me with pop guns and they were yelling, ‘Get down, jive turkey!’ It was pretty funny. The neighbors didn’t know what to think," said Rolovich with a chuckle.
As for what he’ll do this year with that tradition since the Apple Cup is so close to Thanksgiving?
Well, he has an idea.
"Maybe I’ll coach in the turkey suit. That will give people a lot to talk about. I can feel my Twitter blowing up right now as we speak," he said.