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| Edwin Mulitalo won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens as part of a 10-year career in the NFL. Southern Virginia athletics photo |
Southern Virginia president Reed N. Wilcox today named ten-year NFL veteran and Super Bowl champion Edwin Mulitalo head coach of the Knights' football program. Mulitalo replaces Joe DuPaix, who returned to his old job as slotbacks coach at the U.S. Naval Academy.
"Coach Mulitalo is a great man and a great coach with strong relationships and universal respect of the players and coaching staff," said Wilcox. "We're confident that our Super Bowl champion, head coach Mulitalo, with a fantastic assistant head coach and offensive coordinator in Danny DuPaix, will lead a seamless transition to take the team on to the next level."
The Knights were 4-16 in two seasons under Joe DuPaix, after he inherited a program that had lost 19 of 20 games in a tumultuous period in which five people had been in charge of the Southern Virginia program in a span of 25 months.
After playing college football at Arizona, Mulitalo was drafted in 1999 by the Baltimore Ravens. He went on to play ten years in the NFL, including a Super Bowl championship with the Ravens. Mulitalo came to Southern Virginia in 2016 with DuPaix's original coaching staff. During these last two seasons, Mulitalo has built strong relationships and successfully impacted players on both sides of the ball, while working first with the defensive line and then as defensive coordinator.
"I'm thankful for the opportunity to work with Joe at Southern Virginia and to be a part of this program," Mulitalo said. "The whole process over the last two years has been great and I'm excited to step into this new role and opportunity to impact our players."
A year after retiring from the NFL, Mulitalo moved with his wife and three children to the Samoan Island of Upolu where he taught and coached the Church College of Samoa rugby team to a national title. As a Polynesian-American, Mulitalo now joins Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo and Brigham Young University's Kalani Sitake as one of three Polynesian members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to become NCAA head football coaches.
"I couldn't have done this without my wife Laura," Mulitalo said. "She followed me to Samoa and now to Virginia, and I'm grateful for her and all of our great family. I'm also thankful for Joe and his example to me. He's a straight-arrow coach, and I was able to learn from him the attention to detail that running a program requires."
"We are grateful to Coach DuPaix for everything he did for our University and football program and wish him the best of luck in his return to Navy," said vice president of athletics Jason Lamb. "We're also thrilled to have a coach of Ed Mulitalo's caliber who is willing and so well prepared to take the reins of the program to lead it forward without missing a beat.
"Ever since Ed came to our campus, he has been a force for good. His ability to connect with our student-athletes, his deep football knowledge, his love of the game, his integrity and his example as a player, father, and mentor have prepared him to lead our football program into the future."