Remarkable Journey Leads Offensive Coordinator Bush Hamdan to Kentucky
By Jamie H. Vaught
From Boise to Lexington.
That’s the Idaho-to-Kentucky pathway Bush Hamdan took when he accepted the UK football job as the school’s new offensive coordinator back in February, replacing Liam Coen who went to Florida to become the offensive coordinator for NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
And Hamdan is no stranger to SEC football as the 38-year-old was an assistant at Missouri (2020-22) and Florida (2012). Hamdan’s UK job is his fifth offensive coordinator position. He also served as the quarterbacks coach for the Atlanta Falcons in 2017, working with star QB Matt Ryan.
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops is happy to have Hamdan on the coaching staff.
“I’ve known Bush for a few years and spent some quality time with him in 2021,” said Stoops. “Since then, I’ve followed his career and have been very impressed by him. He’s coached under Chris Petersen (at Washington), Steve Sarkisian (NFL) and Eli Drinkwitz (Missouri), three coaches I have a ton of respect for, and I think he’s a rising star in the coaching profession. We are excited to bring Bush and his family to Lexington.”
Before heading to UK, Hamdan reportedly was set to become the highest-paid assistant coach in Boise State history going into the 2024 season. Last season at Boise State, his alma mater, Hamdan guided the high-scoring Broncos to a Mountain West Conference championship, tying with UNLV and San Jose State, and a trip to the LA Bowl.
As a college player at Boise State during the late 2000s, Hamdan served as a two-time captain at QB under head coach Chris Peterson. His last three seasons, all played under Petersen, the Broncos posted a 35-4 overall record. In 2006, the fifth-ranked Broncos posted a perfect 13-0 record, including an overtime victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.
As a senior, Hamdan earned the Bronco Excellence Award for integrity and leadership while earning a bachelor’s degree in communications. In 2009, he also earned his master’s degree in athletic administration from Idaho State.
Before coming to Boise State, Hamdan was a highly decorated prep quarterback in Arlington, Virginia, passing for more than 4,000 yards and 40 touchdowns. He was a member of the Super 44 Prep Team and All-Metro in Washington, D.C.
At UK, Hamdan is now one of the highest-paid assistant coaches in the nation. According to the Lexington Herald Leader, he had a three-year pact with his 2024 salary at $1.25 million.
It was a tough decision for Hamdan to leave Idaho as Boise State is pushing to make an appearance in the newly expanded college football’s 12-team playoff this season. With Kentucky playing in the SEC, it was too much of a lure to turn down the UK job.
After six months in Lexington, Hamdan, who was born in Kuwait City, Kuwait, was asked about his new home.
“Love it. It has been great. I mean this,” he said at a recent press conference. There are great people in this city and I think you guys know that with how they have welcomed me. It has been a great place for my wife, my kids, and the culture here is just different. It’s special. It really is.
“Again, I haven’t been anywhere where you got a head coach (Mark Stoops) that has been in place for 12 years, and then you look at the staff; right? This has got to be one of the longest tenured staffs in America, and that just speaks to what Coach has done. They know exactly what they want, exactly how it needs to be done, and what the standard is, and because of that, it’s a place where the players are excited to be here every day. He understands we have to get them ready, but that doesn’t mean we have to burn them out and wear them out on day one.
“I think the mixture of all these things, how tremendous the people of the city have been, the culture that the coach has here and the understanding that nothing comes to his desk that he is surprised by, with the experience that he has, has made this an unbelievable fit for me and my family.”
Since Hamdan is also the quarterbacks coach in addition to his offensive coordinator duties, he is working very closely with the signal callers, especially junior Brock Vandagriff, a graduate transfer from University of Georgia. In high school, Vandagriff was rated as a five-star prospect by three of the four major recruiting services.
Hamdan is impressed with Vandagriff’s toughness and intelligence.
“He is a consummate pro,” Hamdan said of Vandagriff. “I’ve said that multiple times. This is a big-time football league. We get done with practices at 6:30, he wants to be up in the facility. He’s always watching games on opponents. We know at this position it comes down to kind of locking yourself in that room, if you will. Taking a side with the naysayers have to say and just working and keep getting better every day and I think he is a guy that understands that.”
Overcoming Childhood Adversity
As mentioned earlier, Hamdan was born in Kuwait. He was only four years old when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, starting the Gulf War. While his family was vacationing in the United States where his father, a nuclear engineer, had previously studied at the University of Illinois, their Kuwait home, as it turned out, was destroyed by the war.
So, the Hamdan family, which also included his older brother who eventually played college football at Indiana as a starting QB and later played in the NFL, relocated to San Diego and later to the Washington, D.C., area where his father worked with the U.S. government.
“When you’re a kid, you don’t really know. I look back on it and I think about what my father and mother persevered through,” Bush told the Seattle Times in 2016 when he served as an assistant at the University of Washington. “When you get older, you start to really appreciate the values your parents give to you. And I start to think about what I’ve gone through (in football) and it’s not even close to what they’ve had to deal with to keep us going. …
“We were probably one of the last flights out of Kuwait. I don’t try to make it more dramatic than it needs to be, and I get that I was very young — but we were very, very blessed. Very blessed.”
Several months ago during his introductory press conference at UK, Hamdan was appreciative of his parents’ encouragement and support during their difficult times.
“My dad, probably in his 30s and 40s, spent just trying to move us to this country, and provide us and put us in a safe environment,” he recalled. “And I think about me at 22 getting into this (coaching) profession and it’s been sole focus. So, I’m extremely blessed to have a father like that and what he did for us. I don’t take it lightly to make him proud.”
Hamdan and his wife, Brita, have three children: Sedona, Archer and Sahar.
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of six books about UK basketball, including recently-published “Forever Crazy About The Cats: An Improbable Journey of a Kentucky Sportswriter Overcoming Adversity.” Now a retired college professor who taught at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro., he is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @KySportsStyle or reach him via email at KySportsStyle@gmail.com.
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