We don’t yet know who the next University of Hawaii football coach will be, but we know who it should absolutely not be.
It should not be anybody who doesn’t “get” the University of Hawaii.
Let’s be clear here: We’re not saying the Rainbow Warriors’ next coach has to be Hawaii-born, locally bred or even a UH graduate. Far from it.
If need be they can find the freeway off-ramps later, but whoever replaces Norm Chow has to grasp going in the undercurrents that surround UH football in particular and the university it calls home in general, in competitive as well as cultural terms.
One of the ironies of Chow’s failed tenure at UH was that despite his Hawaii roots, he was too late in understanding some of the common denominators that made the ’Bows a success in good years.
Many of UH’s best seasons were predicated on employing an unconventional offense that the ’Bows’ opponents didn’t see much of elsewhere and struggled to prepare for.
Bob Wagner won with the uniqueness of Paul Johnson’s spread offense. June Jones won by widening the field with the run-and-shoot.
It is hardly a coincidence that the two worst eras in UH football, those of Fred vonAppen (5-31) and Chow (10-36), came when UH’s offense didn’t have its own identity.
Chow initially came in married to a pro-style offense that required UH to play smashmouth with the brick wall of convention. That might have worked if UH had been able to get linemen who could bulldoze opponents on a regular basis.
History tells us, however, the kind of players most equipped to do that usually end up in the Pac-12 or other Power Five conferences. Which was why Wagner and Jones adroitly took the routes they did.
For example, had Chow better taken advantage of the abilities of David Graves, a quarterback well-suited to a more wide-open offense, and some of the players UH had or could get, things might have been different.
For sure they could not have been worse.
Instead it was two years into his stay before Chow admitted the error of his ways and sought change. By then 3-9 and 1-11 seasons had soured the populace.
The next coach needs to understand what is available and how best to utilize it in an offense that makes sense for UH and headaches for its opposition.
Beyond X’s and O’s, the next coach has to recognize the new austerity that impacts UH from coaching salaries through travel and recruiting budgets. The ’Bows have never been awash in funds or blessed with eye-popping facilities. But they endured and made the most of what they had.
And, now, there is even less.
Chow once scoffed at UH’s recruiting budget, saying, “Recruiting budget? At BYU, USC and those other places we didn’t have a ‘budget’ — we just went out and recruited.”
Well, UH, even in the best of years, has never been one of “those other places.” And, now, under even more stringent belt-tightening it has to, as athletic director David Matlin has pledged, “Be prepared to better steward what resources we do have.”
That’s something Chow’s successor needs to both fully accept from the start and be able to deal with. Otherwise he and UH will both be wasting their time.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
