When you watch a college football game these days, there’s usually at least one Polynesian player on the field.
That’s a drastic change from 15 years ago when Nick Rolovich, the Wolf Pack’s offensive coordinator, played for Hawaii. On Rolovich’s teams, about 60 percent of the roster was Polynesian thanks to its location. But the opposition usually didn’t have any Polys. That’s not the case anymore.
“You’re seeing long hair cover up a lot of vowels on a lot of jerseys at this stage in college football,” said Rolovich, a reference to the often hard-to-pronounce Polynesian surnames.