USC hosts first annual personal health checkup for coaches, honoring late assistant Dave Nichol

College football can be an absolute grind for coaches, particularly in the modern era when the transfer portal and NIL have added so many new wrinkles to the daily routines. It can be easy to forget about personal health.

To that end, USC has introduced its first annual Dave Nichol health check for its football staff. Head coach Lincoln Riley tweeted the news on Tuesday evening.

Nichol was a former receivers coach with the program who died suddenly of cancer at age 45, in March 2022. His death shocked the USC community.

“We are heartbroken and devastated,” Riley said in a statement. “Dave was such a tremendous human being and a fantastic football coach. He absolutely loved the game and constantly poured his heart and soul into his teams. He will be dearly missed. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. We, as a program, look forward to playing and coaching for him as we move forward.”

Just four days before his death was announced, USC had announced some staff moves so that Nichol could deal with “a private medical matter.”

The program had promoted offensive analyst Luke Huard as the interim inside receivers coach, but few could have anticipated Nichol being gone so quickly. Thus the focus on early personal health monitoring for staff now.

It’s a fitting way to remember Nichol.

“Had the 1st annual Dave Nichol health check for our football staff today,” Riley wrote on Twitter. “Coaches have so often put their health off to the side. Our hope is that this starts a trend around the country to monitor these staffs & catch any issues before it’s too late.

“We miss you Dave.”

The push by USC to monitor the personal health of its staffers is one that should be adopted by many programs around the country. There’s little downside, beyond taking a little time to run some diagnostics and tests.

Meanwhile, the upside could be potentially huge if issues are uncovered early.

Another coach who would later die relatively out of the blue was Mike Leach, who Nichol had worked for prior to joining Riley’s staff at USC. Like Riley and others, Leach expressed his sympathies to the Nichol family at a life lost so soon.

“Dave was family to us, and he was loved by all who knew him,” Leach said in a statement. “Always a smile on his face, Dave had such a positive personality, attitude and energy. He made everyone around him a better person and impacted everyone he met with kindness, loyalty and friendship. He meant a lot to me as well as countless others, and I will forever be grateful to have had him in my life for the last 22 years.”