If you ever find yourself on a hot summer day at the Vans Warped Tour listening to The Used, Jimmy Eat World, or Taking Back Sunday, and you look toward the front row and think, “Wow, that guy sure looks like Idaho State head football coach Cody Hawkins,” there is a decent chance you are right.
That guy in the front row might just be one of the rising offensive minds in college football, singing along like there is no tomorrow.
Hawkins is a self-proclaimed “music junkie,” especially when the playlist leans emo or pop-punk.
Blink-182. Yellowcard. The Used. The Starting Line. Panic! at the Disco. He can move from that to low-key piano rock, but the old stuff still hits differently for him.
That music has been part soundtrack, part caffeine, and part time machine. Long before Hawkins became the head coach at Idaho State, long before he became known as one of the sharpest passing-game minds in the sport, he was the kid from Idaho who could play quarterback, win games, and still find his way into the crowd at a concert.
“I am always trying to attend Warped Tour,” Hawkins said with a grin. “From the time I was in seventh grade through college, I’d go every year.”
That may not be the standard origin story for a football coach, but Hawkins has never seemed overly interested in fitting the standard mold.
At Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, he went 40-0 as a starting quarterback, won consecutive state championships, earned Idaho Statesman State Player of the Year honors twice, and was named Gatorade Player of the Year in 2005. He continued his career at Colorado, later played professionally in Sweden for the Stockholm Mean Machines, and eventually found his way into coaching.
But the path was never as automatic as it may look from the outside.
Hawkins is the son of Dan Hawkins, the former Boise State, Colorado, and UC Davis head coach and a national coach of the year at three different levels, whose run with the Broncos still carries weight in college football history. Cody grew up inside the college football world. He was around staff meetings, road trips, locker rooms, and sidelines before most kids understood what a third-and-medium call sheet was designed to do. In junior high, he held personnel cards for the Boise State defense and helped with signals and substitutions.
Football was not just what his father did. It was part of the family language.
Still, Cody Hawkins never viewed his father’s shadow as something to escape.
“Getting out of my dad’s shadow has never been something I’ve really worried about,” Hawkins said. “I played for my dad and I coached for my dad at UC Davis for a long time. He’s one of my best friends, my role model, and my hero.”
That does not mean they are the same coach.
Cody describes his father in depth, but from a football standpoint, he sees him as an administrative and organizational wizard, an elite special teams coach, and someone who loves building facilities and shaping programs. Cody sees himself more currently as the ball guy, the one obsessed with coverages, spacing, timing, and touchdowns.
“We both believe in putting the individual first,” Hawkins said. “However, we do have different strengths and experiences. He has been coaching for 30 years, and right now, I love scoring touchdowns. In time, that will play out the way it’s supposed to.”
He learned from his father how to treat people. He learned the lowest-ranking staffer in the room can still have the best idea. Now, in his own program, Hawkins tries to carry that forward.
“I don’t care whether you’re a GA, an intern, or a coordinator; I’m going to listen to you,” Hawkins said. “If you have a good idea that can make us better, I am all ears.”
The same applies to his players. Hawkins can talk routes, protections, and defensive structure with the best of them. But he also wants to know about grandparents, summer plans, and what a player wants his life to look like 10 years from now. That may sound soft in a sport built on toughness and hits, but to Hawkins, it is part of the job.
The surprise is that he did not always want the job.
In fact, he is blunt about it.
“I really didn’t want to be a football coach, and I didn’t want to be a head football coach,” Hawkins said. “Now, I do love coordinating an offense.”
What he means is that he loves the football part. He loves drawing plays, building a system, attacking leverage, and solving problems. The head coach’s chair, though, comes with everything else.
Highs. Lows. Fundraising. Scheduling. Staffing. Budgets. Parents. Academics. Roster management. Every decision, every issue, every result eventually lands on his desk.
“There are a lot of things outside of actually coaching that you have to deal with,” Hawkins said. “I grew up around the industry. I saw the highs and lows. I think, in a way, I was a little tainted by seeing the dark side of it, and that is really why I wanted to steer away from it as a profession.”
But the reward is control over culture. It is the ability to build the room the way he believes it should be built. It is also the ability to be the father he wants to be.
“If I want to go pick my kids up at 3 o’clock on a Tuesday, I can,” Hawkins said. “I absolutely love being a dad.”
He says his own father did not fish, did not golf, and did not have many hobbies outside of football. But Dan Hawkins was a good coach and, in Cody’s eyes, a great dad. Cody sees that model, then adds his own version. He does not fish or golf either. He puts on music. He designs offense. He goes home to his kids.
Before he fully committed to coaching, Hawkins tried to find another route. His father encouraged him to do something else first. Cody worked with Nike and the Elite 11 circuit, training quarterbacks around the country after being an Elite 11 quarterback himself alongside players such as Matthew Stafford and Tim Tebow. It was football-adjacent. It just was not enough.
“You can’t replace being in a locker room, and you can’t replace game day,” Hawkins said. “That was an itch that I had to scratch.”
That itch led him to Ohio State, where he joined Urban Meyer’s program as a graduate assistant. Hawkins calls it an opportunity to get his “teeth kicked in.” He learned what he loved about coaching and what he did not. He learned from winning and losing, from playing and sitting, from being cheered and being booed.
Every stop shaped him.
He also still chases the occasional concert.
On a bye weekend last season, Hawkins and Idaho State offensive line coach John Hughes flew to Las Vegas for the When We Were Young festival. They watched bands all day, stayed late, caught a 12:45 a.m. flight back to Salt Lake City, drove to Pocatello in the early morning, and made it to the office by 7 a.m.
“The game plan for the following week was already in,” Hawkins said, “and Hughes and I went on a short adventure and created a memory on something we wanted to do.”
The story works because a successful football coach is also human. It is also a reminder that Hawkins’ edge is not built from pretending to be older, harder, or more buttoned-up than he is. He can be serious about football without being joyless about life.
There is still an itch to play, too, but only to an extent. Hawkins can still throw it. He also knows his limitations.
The scouting report on Cody Hawkins, he joked, would be simple: make him move.
“I can still throw it really well,” Hawkins said. “I can jump in and still throw it just like Reggie Miller could probably still shoot. But if you get me off the platform or force me to scramble — nope, not happening!”
Maybe that self-awareness is part of the charm. Hawkins knows what he is and what he is not. He is a coach’s son, but not a copy of his father. He is a head coach, but still an offensive coordinator at heart. He is a grown man with children and a program to run, but he can still end up front and center at a concert, singing songs that sound like adolescence and feel like gasoline.
Some coaches build their careers trying to become something they are not.
Cody Hawkins seems more interested in finding the right beat, turning it up, and letting the points follow.
