The overwhelming temptation is to declare Idaho State’s hiring of Cody Hawkins as its next football coach a grand slam. Hawkins, the offensive coordinator under his father Dan at Cal-Davis, is everything I had hoped Idaho State would get in a coach: A young, aggressive offensive mind with recruiting ties throughout the Northwest, including Idaho, where he played and coached high school football.

In his third year as the Aggies’ offensive coordinator this season, Hawkins’ team ranked second in the Big Sky Conference in total offense, averaging over 486 yards a game, and fifth in scoring, at almost 36 points a contest. Contrast that with an Idaho State offense that averaged under 14 points a game, and I’m ready to break out into a ridiculously-out-of-tune version of “Hallelujah.”

More than numbers, Hawkins’ offense passed the eye test. When I had the opportunity to broadcast the Bengals’ 43-3 loss at Davis this fall, it was like watching an NFL offense vs. a junior-high attack. Hawkins’ approach reminded me of the fun and spirited offenses his father employed in helping to build the Boise State mystique back in the early 2000s. I do not claim to know anything about offensive strategy, but I know what I like, and Cal-Davis’ offense was entertaining and creative, even to my untrained eye.

Hawkins has coached quarterbacks and run offenses at UC-Davis, a Los Angeles junior college that finished 11-0 and won a California state championship, at Boise’s Bishop Kelly, his high school alma mater, for the U.S. National Team (who knew there was such a thing in football?), and for the Stockholm Mean Machine in Europe. Everywhere he’s been, he’s left behind productive, high-scoring offenses, and he offers immediate credibility to any offensive recruit.

My apprehension about Hawkins’ hiring is this: What this Idaho State program — its players, remaining assistant coaches, fans and supporters — really need is a good trauma therapist. Dumped by their last coach, Charlie Ragle, after one desultory season during which Ragle threw his players under the bus and threatened to run then all out of town after the season, most everybody associated with the Bengal program is wounded.

The remaining players are still staggering from the 1-10 campaign and Ragle’s threats to send them all packing. The remaining assistant coaches, who uprooted themselves and their families to come to Pocatello around this time last year, are left wondering whether they will have jobs after Ragle deserted them for an assistant’s position at Arizona State.

And Lord knows the Bengal fan base, which hasn’t enjoyed a winning season in five years — or a playoff run in 39 — is dealing with yet another series of disappointments.

The question then becomes: Is Hawkins, who will turn 35 next March, equipped to manage all this collective pain? I’ve never met him, and that question will only be answered over time, as he meets with his returning players and assistant coaches, starts to assemble his own staff, and begins recruiting. But I will say that, despite his relative youth, there are hints that Hawkins comes from a background and a culture that should serve him well in dealing with all his wounded stakeholders.

First off, Hawkins endured something of a traumatic experience of his own when he was playing quarterback for his dad, when the elder Hawkins was head coach at Colorado. The Buffs went 19-39 under the elder Hawkins, and Cody was quarterback during part of that period. As you might imagine, the lamentations about perceived nepotism were rampant in the social media surrounding the Colorado program. The younger Hawkins endured the criticism and, eventually, was replaced as the starting quarterback part-way through his senior season. I don’t know how that experience shaped Hawkins’ approach to players, but we can hope it helped him develop some enduring empathy.

Then there is the Cal-Davis culture. The elder Hawkins took some heat at Colorado when he went on a rant in response to a letter from an anonymous parent of a player. The letter protested that the players were getting only a two-week break in their offseason conditioning program when they normally had three weeks off.

“It’s Division I football!” Dan Hawkins said. “It’s the Big 12! It ain’t intramurals.”

Perhaps learning from that tirade, or maybe acknowledging the different environments between Power 5 football at Colorado and the more academically-oriented Cal-Davis, Hawkins and his staff, including Cody, have worked hard to create what they label “a culture focused on providing a well-rounded college experience that combines elite academics with the opportunity to compete at the highest level of college athletics.”

Under Dan Hawkins, UC-Davis — which some publications rank as the fifth-best public institution in the nation — has moved spring practice to the middle of winter quarter to allow its players to participate in internships, community service projects or study abroad, opportunities that many non-athletes take advantage of it at Davis. Many UC-Davis former players have pursued graduate degrees abroad, according to the elder Hawkins’ bio on the UC-Davis web site.

Cody claims to espouse the same holistic approach, according to his bio. “We all believe in the quality balance of life, holistic excellence and the pursuit of championships that is the common thread throughout the history of UC Davis football,” Cody is quoted in his bio. “I look forward to … helping our student-athletes achieve all of their goals, on and off the field.”

Idaho State is not Cal-Davis, in so many ways. I don’t expect Cody Hawkins to suddenly turn Pocatello into Northern California. I am hopeful, however, that he will exercise the same sense of humanity with the wounded survivors in the Idaho State program that he and his father espoused in building the Cal-Davis program.

If he can successfully manage all those fractured personas, history says he’ll put an entertaining and productive football team on the field at Holt Arena. That, in itself, would be a healing experience for long-suffering Bengal fans.

Brad Bugger has been an observer of athletics in southeastern Idaho for over 40 years as a sportswriter, broadcaster and fan. He can be reached with comments, questions and column suggestions at bpbugger@gmail.com