The Toddfather

From February to June, if you were to walk into Highland at 6 AM, you would see the football team in the middle of an early morning practice. Whether the team is lifting, sprinting, or doing drills, there is one man that you simply couldn’t miss growling at them through it all. This is Highland assistant coach Tim Todd.
“I’m kind of a bear of a person so I guess I intimidate people somewhat easily,” Todd said.
Todd has always been on the tougher side. Growing up in the middle of the desert, in Blythe, California, he learned to battle the heat, waterski, ride motorcycles, work hard, and love football.
“Growing up in the desert, I was either on a motorcycle in the winter, or on the river in the summertime,” Todd said. “I grew up in an agricultural town raising swine from 8 years old to 14 and working in the field as a kid. It was quite an experience in the 120-degree heat pitching banana squash and watermelon for eight bucks an hour.”
Outside of working on the fields, and waterskiing, Todd attended Palo Verde High School where he was a multi-sport athlete. After giving up basketball his sophomore year, Todd played football and golf throughout high school.
“I knew from the third grade on what I was going to be as far as a football player,” Todd said. “I would play as long as I could.”
After graduating from Palo Verde, Todd went on to play football at Pasadena City Junior College.
“I had saved $15,000 from working as a kid for college in my savings account,” Todd said. “Then I went and played juco football and that $15,000 was gone the first year, so a scholarship was really important to me.”
After greyshirting the first year, Todd played two full seasons for Pasadena City, then earned a scholarship to play for the University of Utah.
“I played on the 92’-94’ Utes where coach Mac (Ron Mcbride) kind of turned the program around,” Todd said. “We won the three bowl games in a row, including a 10-2 season my senior year where we finished 8th in the nation.”
After a successful career at the U, Todd decided it would be best for his body to end his playing career and start coaching. He then went on to coach at various high schools and junior colleges around the nation for the next 20 years.
After 20 straight years of coaching football, Todd decided to take a break from football for a little bit.
“I got out of it for a few years and worked for UPS in Dallas Texas, just to live a normal life for a minute,” Todd said. “After Dallas, I went back to California to take care of my pops until he passed then I moved back up here in 2021.”
That’s when Danny Schwam (one of the athletics directors at Highland) got in touch with him and started to have meetings with him over lunch. Schwam was no stranger to Todd. Schwam’s father is Ron McBride, the man who coached Todd at Utah.
“I’ve known Danny since 1992, so it was an easy transition,” Todd said. “He recruited me to get back into football, and I liked Highland. I liked the kids, I liked the administration, and the coaches were easy to get along with.”
Todd arrived at Highland in the spring of ‘23 following three losing seasons with a combined record of 6-23 and no playoff wins. He joined coach Kautai Olevao and his staff, which had only been coaching together for two years.
“He was kind of new to being the head coach,” Todd said. “He was more of a defensive guy, so I came and helped him out with offensive play calling and installed the run game my first year.”
Highland’s football program has struggled over the last five years mostly due to a lack of numbers within the program. Each year, they get around 30 freshmen, but by the time that class gets to senior year, only 15 are still playing football. Todd is working very hard to retain kids and recruit within the school to fix this problem.
“It’s just the process of doing the little things it takes to rebuild a program for us,” Todd said.
Because of how many kids Highland was getting each year, the coaches started doing a lot of recruiting within the school to help bring the numbers up. This brought in a lot of kids that were new to football. This requires a lot of training and development for the kids. Todd works really hard to develop guys to be better for the next season. He works primarily with the offensive and defensive lines.
“I think that his (Todd’s) development of players is very impressive,” Highland assistant coach Ed Lloyd said. “He can take a guy with minimal talent as a position coach on the o-line and d-line and make them better than an average high school player.”
When Todd isn’t coaching the player, he’s keeping them in check. Always making sure that the players have assignments in and are prepared for tests.
“I think he is the type of person to take responsibility over everybody,” sophomore offensive lineman John Noa said. “He’s always keeping people in check, and he makes sure I have all of my assignments in and that I’m prepared for tests.”
When Todd goes home after football, he walks his dog, thinks about football, and then watches more football.
“I have a lab 8-year-old lab so that’s my exercise. He has to be walked every day,” Todd said. “I come home to the dog and then I do more football. I watch on the iPad then I’ll watch a college game or an NFL game then game plan for the next game.”
In season, Todd is pretty much occupied with football the entire week. Going to practices, games, lifts, and preparing for games and creating schemes. During the day, Todd works at the school as a hall monitor and takes charge of the in-school suspensions.
“This year we brought in school suspension back, so you’ll notice the hallways are a little bit less full than they have been in the past two years. So, if kids are skipping class or not where they are supposed to be. They come spend the period or the day with me,” Todd said. “We write apology letters, pick up trash, and clean the school. Kids generally don’t last more than a day with me; they don’t want to come back.”
Outside of school, Todd’s time is almost 100% occupied with Highland football. The team’s season came to an end on Friday. Highland has battled many injuries this year, which ultimately led to a first-round loss to Springville in the playoffs.
“The injuries have been brutal, but right now it’s about winning today,” Todd said. “Winning every day in practice and getting the kids to buy into every rep is our focus right now. I think if we can adapt that mantra and not worry about the end result the victories will come.”