After coaching for a multitude of years that includes stints with numerous Division I football teams and even some time in the National Football League, Robert Todd Littlejohn has returned home to Bakersfield to be the head coach of the Renegades football team.

Littlejohn grew up going to every Renegade home game and following the team for most of their road games as well. Littlejohn was with the Renegades previously as a player during the 1983-84 seasons, playing for  coaches Gerry Collis and Carl Bowser, and then returned to BC as the defensive backs coach for the 1990-91 seasons.

“A lot,” Littlejohn says laughing when asked how much it means to him to become the head coach at BC. “My mom worked here for, you know, 45 years, and having, literally grown up and watched all the great players that have gone through here over the years, having a chance to play on this field, then having a chance to come back and coach as an assistant, my feeling towards Bakersfield College even back then was always big time, and so coming back in this capacity is big time, you know, to me.” Littlejohn was actually hired last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from coaching his first game until the 2021 season.

“One of the difficulties was that I didn’t have anybody to call to ask ‘em ‘hey, how did you deal with your first year as a head coach in a year of pandemic?’ There’s nobody and nothing to reference… we just stayed prepared everyday, ‘cause you never knew when it was going to actually happen and when the opportunity came for our first game, we were more focused on the techniques, the fundamentals, the development overall as a team and for players, and the continuity for us as a staff… it wasn’t a ‘wait ‘till we get to that point, let’s all of a sudden do it’, we just continued to prepare everyday.”

Outside of BC, Littlejohn has coached at big time Division I schools including UCLA, Syracuse, and Cal-Berkeley. Most recently before becoming head coach at BC, Littlejohn spent the previous two seasons as the safeties and special teams coach at Prairie View A&M in Texas. Littlejohn’s coaching expereience doesn’t end at the college level however, as he also coached for the New York Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL.

On the things he learned while coaching in the NFL, Littlejohn stated “you learn a lot obviously from each place… you learn a lot of different things at different places under different leaders, but then… it’s not like you can take everything that you’ve learned from those places. Bits and pieces of what you can apply to your program and to your players obviously to help, but I think just practice tempo, a sense of urgency, the details, the organization obviously is really, really big identifying who your team is, you know a young team, a more experienced team you can do and add certain things to a more veteran team than you can to a younger team, so each of those places allowed me to then reflect on them and implement some of the things to prepare them for the four-year, and ultimately that’s what we’re trying to do, is to help them understand these are the expectations… from training room, to lifting, to wearing the proper gear, you know all those little things at each of those places… so I’d say I’ve taken all of those things, organization and practice tempo and getting to know the players in a different way rather than just an athlete… so I just kinda observed those kind of things at those places as well”.

In his first season as BC football’s head coach, Littlejohn’s Renegades have been ranked as high as #7 in the state of California, and currently hold a 2-6 record a little more than halfway through the season. Their next game will see them face Long Beach College at home on Oct. 30.