The record-breaking playing career. The stardom at his hometown college. His ascension to becoming an FBS head coach.
Craig Stutzmann had known about San Jose State head coach Ken Niumatalolo for decades. Growing up near the University of Hawaii, SJSU’s offensive coordinator had watched Niumatalolo play college football. He said “everybody” went to practices to see Niumatalolo and his Hawaii teammates prepare for games.
Stutzmann went on to play at Hawaii himself, where he graduated fifth in the program’s all-time record books with 2,025 receiving yards. He coached at the high school level before becoming a graduate assistant at Hawaii, where he eventually became a quarterbacks coach from 2016-19. During that time, he worked with Va’a Niumatalolo, Ken Niumatalolo’s son. Billy Ray Stutzmann, Craig Stutzmann’s brother, was an assistant at Navy when Ken Niumatalolo was the head coach there.
Through these connections, Craig Stutzmann developed a relationship with and learned from “Coach Ken.” The image he had developed in his mind of the quarterback he grew up admiring and the coach who has over 100 wins in the FBS accurately reflected the man himself on a personal level.
Niumatalolo, now San Jose State’s head coach after more than a decade at Navy, believes he’s enjoyed success because of the environment he’s established wherever he’s been. His assistant coaches and players attest to it.
Authenticity and love, Niumatalolo told HERO Sports, are two of the tenets of his coaching philosophy. And those have helped guide San Jose State through a coaching change as the Spartans aim to compete for a Mountain West Championship in 2025.
“I just try to be me,” Niumatalolo said. “You know what I mean? I just try to be me. When I came, Coach (Brent) Brennan was here, he’s a phenomenal coach, but I couldn’t be him. I have to be me. So I was going to lead the way I lead and the way I’ve always done it.
“But the foundation of our culture is always love. And that’s always how I’ve done things. I want to coach kids hard. I want to be demanding, but not demeaning. … And I think when guys come to practices, they feel that.”
So when Niumatalolo became the head coach at SJSU and asked Stutzmann to be his offensive coordinator, he didn’t need much reason to mull it over.
In fact, Niumatalolo promised Stutzmann some freedom if he were to join the staff, but Stutzmann said all he needed was an offer. He knew where he wanted to go.
In Niumatalolo’s first season there, SJSU went 7-6 in 2024, including wins over Oregon State and Stanford, with an appearance in the Hawaii Bowl. Stutzmann believes the vision he saw for SJSU is coming to fruition and is confident the program will see another step of growth in 2025.
“He knows how to win,” Stutzmann said. “He knows how to win the right way with integrity and the people around him.”
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Ken Niumatalolo’s Career Path To San Jose State
Niumatalolo is Navy’s all-time winningest coach with 109 wins and was the AAC Coach of the Year three times. The Midshipmen won at least a share of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy eight times when he was head coach.
But Niumatalolo was fired following the 2022 season. He was UCLA’s director of leadership in 2023 under head coach Chip Kelly. Niumatalolo noted it was a tremendous opportunity to work alongside his son, Ali’i Niumatalolo, who was a graduate assistant there. Niumatalolo also learned from Kelly, primarily how he handled recruiting, the transfer portal, and NIL.
But when the San Jose State job opened and he spoke with the university’s leadership, Niumatalolo said he “jumped at the opportunity.”
San Jose State associate head coach and defensive coordinator Derrick Odum was previously at SJSU when Brent Brennan, now at Arizona, was the Spartans’ head coach. Odum said Niumatalolo “exudes wisdom” and only enhanced some of the elements of the program.
“He can be very adamant about things and very fiery,” Odum said. “… He’s got fire in his belly and wants to compete and win, and it drives him every day.”
Niumatalolo instituted his own methods for running the program. And despite being in his first year at SJSU, the Spartans continued to win.
Compared to Power Four programs, Niumatalolo said SJSU has minimal NIL resources. When power transfers commit to the Spartans, he’s asked why they picked his team over others.
“They say, ‘Coach, it just felt different here. There’s places that talk about family and love. I felt it there,’” he recalls players saying. “And that’s all, of anything as a coach, that was awesome for me to hear. It wasn’t something on a PowerPoint. It wasn’t fake energy. It was authentic and real.”
Niumatalolo’s emphasis on genuine connection with his players affects myriad aspects of the program. In recruiting, he says some players might be taken to luxurious restaurants at other schools. But that makes everything feel fabricated, Niumatalolo said.
Instead, his priority is bringing players to practices. Let the prospects see San Jose State’s players and coaches in their “true light,” he said, in an environment where these players will be spending a good portion of their time anyway.
“You can’t hide it out at practice because you’re in your world now,” Niumatalolo said. “You’re going to see truly how a coach coaches, how he treats his players, the interaction between the coaches amongst themselves. And that’s been our biggest sell. Our culture has been our biggest sell.
“It hasn’t been NIL money or revenue sharing or any of that. It’s been guys have come to our practices and they’ve felt that it’s different here.”
San Jose State’s ‘Night And Day’ Differences
Looking back on last offseason, Niumatalolo noticed “night and day” improvements after this year’s spring practices.
A year ago, the SJSU coaching staff was just being solidified. About 50 new players were on the Spartans’ roster. Everyone was trying to learn each other’s names, let alone become acclimated to each other on the field.
Odum noted the leaders coming back from the 2024 season have made it easier for this year’s transfers to mesh with the rest of the team.
“Having those guys that have been through it and bringing those new guys along I feel really comfortable that they can handle that this summer and keep leading in the right direction for our team,” he said. “I feel good with the leadership that we’ve got though, for sure.”
San Jose State concluded those spring practices mostly healthy, Niumatalolo pointed out, and still managed to be physical in some drills. The Spartans have to run the ball, defend the run, and improve on third downs defensively to contend for a Mountain West Championship, Niumatalolo added, but he feels the Spartans did that.
San Jose State was just over .500 in the first year following a coaching change, but the Spartans were even more competitive than their record shows. They went to double overtime at Washington State and went to 5OT against South Florida in the Hawaii Bowl. SJSU lost to UNLV and Colorado State by single digits and was leading against Boise State early in the second half.
Being so close against several strong opponents, despite the chaos of the previous offseason, leads Niumatalolo to feel hopeful about 2025.
Through his decades of coaching, he’s learned establishing an environment where players genuinely feel valued can often lead to on-the-field results. He, along with his coaching staff, believe that will continue to propel the program forward.
“I love being here, and I feel like having gone through it last year and seeing what we have, I’m optimistic about the future and what we can do and what we can accomplish,” Niumatalolo said. “Like I said in the first year, to be able to go to a bowl game with that transition, with that influx, with all the chaos of last year, I feel good about it.
“It didn’t feel great because I feel like we left some games on the table. But I’m excited about this year. I feel like we can do a lot of good things. We love it here. I think there’s a lot of things we can accomplish here, and it’s exciting to be here.”
