“There’s always pressure. For us, we’ve had a very good team for a couple of years. We win, and people expect us to continue to win. The way we deal with it is not thinking about it. We concentrate on simple things we have control over.”

— Tim Chang, August 2004

Ten years ago, a record-breaking former University of Hawaii quarterback started his coaching career.

Having attended and documented 50 of the 53 games and hundreds of practices of Timmy Chang’s topsy-turvy Hawaii playing career from 2000 to 2004, I concluded the following in a 2012 column when he became a graduate assistant at SMU:

“Tim Chang was a good football player who didn’t live up to hype he didn’t ask for. But his experiences, good and bad, might make him a very good mentor.”

Now, we’ll see if a decade of the itinerant life of a typical college football assistant coach, combined with the thickening of skin from his playing days, has prepared Chang for what faces him now as UH’s new head coach.

A lot of the focus has been on this being the return of the prodigal son.

But it struck me when Chang mentioned Harold Jackson as a mentor that there’s another aspect to this. Chang is now a 40-year-old man who has been around the block a couple of times.

For every one of the very few players and coaches who can comfortably unpack their bags and spread roots, there are hundreds with their own versions of the Johnny Cash hit “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

Chang’s goes like this:

Phoenix, Detroit, Philadelphia, Dusseldorf, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Dallas, Jackson, Emory, Reno, Fort Collins.

And now, back to Manoa.

Disenchanted with the previous coach, many of UH’s best players have left en masse. The fan base has to be rebuilt, too, after unreasonable COVID restrictions, a dramedy of a hiring process and a general lack of state support for the program.

Oh, plus, there’s the little detail of no adequate stadium.

Even before all this, it’s usually hard to recruit to UH.

But Chang is approaching it with the right attitude. “As people look at them as challenges I look at them as opportunities,” he said at his homecoming reception Friday at the Stan Sheriff Center.

Re-connecting with the Rainbow Warriors alumni is a great early step. Friday was a good reminder that the group includes some powerful people, like Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, his chief of staff Sam Moku, and Chang’s teammate who is now a member of the Stadium Authority, Mike Iosua.

When asked what he would do after signing day next week, Chang’s answer wasn’t that he’d kick up his feet, take a deep breath and enjoy being home. There was no hesitation in his reply.

“Continue working.”

Part of the problem for Chang’s predecessor, Todd Graham, was that there was no pressure. He was financially set for life, playing with house money (most of it from Arizona State and not here, thankfully). And he had no emotional connection to Hawaii.

It’s quite the opposite for Chang.

For a while, starting quarterback of an NFL team was his dream job. For the past 10 years, it’s been this. Coming home, to be head coach of his alma mater.

“It’s a dream come true,” said his mother, Mary Ann, speaking for her son, and herself, too — now she doesn’t have to get on a plane or two to see her son and all those grandkids.

Sometimes people forget that Chang wasn’t universally loved by UH fans. Part of it was because he was the most well-known player to come out of Saint Louis School at the peak of local anti-Crusaders sentiment because they almost never lost.

He could’ve gone to college at Cal. But Hawaii’s offense was a natural fit for Chang, similar to what he operated so well out of at Saint Louis.

“In my mind Hawaii was always the No. 1 pick, especially as I watched the season in 1999 and saw June (Jones) turn it around,” he said. “And when people commit, they start to help recruit the other guys. Twenty-two years ago that happened. Twenty-two years later we want to make it happen again.”

Much was expected of Chang the quarterback, and he piled up record-breaking numbers. More often than not he delivered wins, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he was out with injuries, sometimes he played hurt.

Of course, it saddened him when he was booed by the home fans, but it never made him bitter. Coaches, especially quarterbacks assistant Dan Morrison, and Chang’s family buoyed his spirits during the down times.

“I had a lot of fun, and I got to represent Hawaii. I was blessed. All of the experiences made me the coach and person I am today,” Chang said in 2018.

“My parents taught me to always be humble, respectful and grateful,” he said Saturday. “Not everyone gets these opportunities. At the end of the day, it’s just a game.”

Now it’s more — it’s his job, and he’s in charge of the state’s most high-profile sports team.

One of our veteran reporters, Dan Nakaso, is a Japanese-American who lived the first 32 years of his life on the continent, and was a 5-foot-3 point guard on his high school basketball team. A recent conversation with him reminded me that many Asian-Americans who don’t have a connection to Hawaii will be rooting for Chang largely because of his surname, as many did during his playing days.

“If that inspires people, that’s awesome,” Chang said Saturday, after a recruiting breakfast with three potential future Rainbow Warriors and members of what is now known as Da Braddahhood.