Inside The Huskies

Ikaika Malloe Resurfaces At Another Big Ten School

The former UW player and coach is held in high esteem in the coaching ranks.
Dan Raley|
Ikaika Malloe is shown with Vita Vea (50) before the UW faced Penn State in the 2017 Fiesta Bowl.
Ikaika Malloe is shown with Vita Vea (50) before the UW faced Penn State in the 2017 Fiesta Bowl. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Ikaika Malloe wasn't out of work long.

On Friday, the former University of Washington football player and assistant coach confirmed with a social media posting he has been hired by Penn State, with news reports indicating he will become the Nittany Lions' defensive-line coach on Matt Campbell's new staff.

Malloe, 51, was a midseason casualty as the UCLA defensive coordinator, let go by the Bruins in September after coach DeShaun Foster was fired.

This comes four seasons following his departure from the UW when Jimmy Lake was dismissed with the season still in progress, too.

Malloe, with Husky defensive linemen Vita Vea and Laiatu Latu among the players he's coached and sent to the NFL, has never been the problem.

He's just aligned himself with coaches who weren't prepared to lead FBS programs.

Malloe's connection to the UW goes back more than three decades after he came to Montlake from Hawaii as a walk-on player in 1992, following its national championship season.

He would earn a scholarship and become a starter as a senior in 1995 at two positions, starting six games as an outside linebacker and five as a strong safety for a 7-4-1 team coached by Jim Lambright.

Malloe next worked five seasons as a UW student assistant, program coordinator and graduate assistant for Lambright and Rick Neuheisel while pursuing a degree in sociology.

Malloe began his coaching career in earnest at Western Illinois, followed by stops at UTEP, Hawaii, Yale, Portland State and Utah State before Chris Petersen hired him as the Husky defensive-line coach for a team that ended up in the College Football Playoff.

Thus began six more seasons at his alma mater, giving him 16 years in all at the UW as a player and a coach.

Once the Lake coaching era blew up, Malloe rebounded by going to UCLA and taking Latu with him.

The edge rusher hurt his neck in practice during his second season with the Huskies in 2020 and was informed his was a career-ending injury.

However, Malloe brought him to the Bruins, where the medical staff cleared him and he became an All-American selection and a first-round draft pick for the Indianapolis Colts.

So it's on to Penn State, which will play Jedd Fisch's UW team next fall in Seattle at an undetermined date, with Malloe plotting ways to beat his old school.

Someday he'll be a head coach somewhere.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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