Inside The Huskies

At UW, Every Day Was Christmas Morning for Rip Rowan

The former Husky defensive-line coach has resurfaced at Georgia Southern.

Dan Raley

Elwyn "Rip" Rowan will be remembered for having one of the shortest runs as a University of Washington assistant football coach. He had his hands on a full-time job for all of 10 months.

His stint was so brief, the defensive-line coach met with the Seattle media exactly once. 

In that 15-minute interview, Rowan happily offered up a line to describe his good fortune in getting hired at the UW by saying, "I'm like a kid on Christmas morning every day."

And then he was gone, purged with others in the coaching turnover from Jimmy Lake to Kalen DeBoer. The UW wasn't the gift that keeps on giving. Rip got riffed. He and the others didn't make it to Christmas morning, turning in their playbooks shortly after Thanksgiving.

To his credit, Rowan used that Husky coaching experience to accept a new assignment on Friday at Georgia Southern, joining Clay Helton's staff as the D-line coach and accompanying former UW defensive-backs coach Will Harris and possibly defensive analyst Aaron Schwanz from Seattle to Statesboro, Georgia.

He will answer to Harris, who was hired as the Eagles defensive coordinator, while Schwanz is expected to receive a full-time job and take a promotion to linebackers coach. 

Rowan likely had to convince Helton that the uneven performance of the Washington defensive line — one largely responsible for enabling opponents to average nearly 200 yards rushing per game and for seven opposing running backs to top the 100-yard mark — was an anomaly and not truly reflective of his coaching abilities.

To be fair to him, the guys up front had trouble stopping the run the previous season. Rowan just couldn't get it fixed in a hurry.

In his solitary Montlake media exchange last April, the personable Georgia native offered up yet another upbeat story of how he made his UW coaching breakthrough after serving as a loyal Husky support person.

Rowan told how he was jogging along Lake Union on a Friday afternoon when Lake called him and offered him the job.

"I almost hit my knees," he said. "I was speechless. I was holding back tears."

Rowan took over a UW coaching slot previously occupied by defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski, who left for Texas. In moving people around, Lake named Bob Gregory as the new Husky DC and Ikaika Malloe went from the D-line coach to outside linebacker coach, with all of those changes creating a spot for Rowan.

One of the eventual criticisms of Lake was he promoted quality coaches such as Derham Cato and Rowan rather than pursue more established and experienced assistant coaches. Yet Lake saw something in these guys that he liked, hence he launched their careers. Coaches have to start somewhere.

A former Austin Peay defensive lineman and linebacker, Rowan previously served as a graduate assistant at Southern Miss and Florida Atlantic before coming to the UW in 2019 as a quality assistant for Chris Petersen. He traveled across the country to build coaching credentials.

He took on a tough job. The young Husky D-line coach wound up shuttling players in and out of games nonstop, looking for someone to make a difference. None of his guys would start the entire season. 

Veterans Tuli Letuligasenoa, Faatui Tuitele and Taki Taimani got banged up or underperformed, though Letuligasenoa showed enough ability while he was in there to be selected All-Pac-12 honorable mention. Taimani ended up in the transfer portal after failing to register a sack in four seasons. Nagging injuries slowed promising true freshmen Kuao Peihopa and Voi Tunuufi. Jacob Bandes and Noa Ngalu filled in as spot players.

Rowan seemed to have the respect of his UW defensive lineman, though he once got in the way of Taimani during a spring drill and received a healthy if not playful shove from the defensive tackle. 

Now he'll build a rapport with a new set of players in his native Georgia, hoping to make the relationship last longer, looking for program success. 

Today, the newly hired Rowan will wake up to Christmas morning. And tomorrow. And the next day. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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