Video: Wazzu player calls out media for "trying to take out our head guy"
Over the past several weeks, there has been a lot of headlines made from Nick Rolovich's decision to not get vaccinated, despite a mandate for state employees in Washington amid the team's 3-3 start to the year.
The deadline for state employees, like Rolo, to apply for religious or medical exemption passed earlier this month. Despite his efforts to keep the information private, reports were shared over the weekend that Rolo had filed for the religious exemption, and he confronted those reports after their 31-24 win over Oregon State.
"I’ll confirm that," Rolovich shared after the game after waking up to reports that cited his former coach June Jones was the one who shared the private information with USA Today.
"Not terribly happy with the way it happened. I just hope there's no player that I coach has to wake up and feel the way I felt today."
State employees have until October 18th to be fully vaccinated, or to receive an approved medical or religious exemption.
On Saturday, frustrated that so much has been made of his coach's decision to not vaccinated, Wazzu quarterback Jayden De Laura weighed in on the issue.
"I've kind of been waiting to speak on this topic for a while. Players, we have no issue with coach Rolo. We have no issues with any of our coaches, we respect their decisions."
"I feel like it's the guys covering us, that are trying to dig a hole on our Cougar football team, and I thought you guys are supposed to be supporting us, and here you guys are over here trying to take out our head guy.'
"Drawing all these...he's a bad guy on our team and he's the reason why we lost and stuff, and that's not it. It's just, offensively, we weren't executing and it showed."
"All in all, we have no problem with Rolo. I respect him. I love him to death. I would do anything for him."
A lot hangs in the balance of that religious exemption application with the deadline just seven days away, and players in the program clearly seem ready to march on with Rolo leading the way.
Washington State will face Stanford this week at home before playing a three-game stretch against top 25 opponents in BYU, Arizona State, and Oregon.
