A hard-nosed, undersized running back checked in at No. 84 when the Honolulu Star-Bulletin counted down the 100 greatest University of Hawaii football players in 2009, in celebration of 100 years since the program’s inception.

But if we were to evaluate overall importance to the program over the course of its history, Jimmy Asato would be ranked much, much higher.

Asato, who was born on Maui and raised on Oahu, would have turned 95 last month He died of natural causes in May. Memorial services were held Friday at Kalihi Union Church.

“About 50 or 60 people, short and sweet,” said his nephew, Jon Fujiwara. “But I learned a lot about him. Growing up, Uncle Jim’s house was the gathering place for family parties, and I was just a kid running around the place with my cousins. He was a humble guy, but with a sly sense of humor. He was nice, but I could tell he was someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. I knew he worked at UH and he coached the football team a couple of years, and thought that’s cool. But I didn’t know the rest of it.”

The rest of it includes that Asato was a two-time Rainbows MVP, in 1950 and ’51, and that he had also briefly coached the UH baseball team.

Oh, and then there’s this little detail: Ten years after his playing days with the ’Bows were over, Asato brought the UH football program back to life.

In 1961, he was minding his own business, working as a P.E. instructor at Manoa, when athletic director Ed Chui asked him to take on one of those “other duties as assigned.”

Between teaching classes, could he please coach the football team … the team that was disbanded the year before after a third consecutive losing season?

College football coaching jobs weren’t the plums they are now — especially this one, with few resources and fewer players — not to mention cancellation of the previous season.

Asato said he wasn’t particularly thrilled about it at first, but he didn’t hesitate. Duty called. So he grabbed his whistle and clipboard and got to it.

“I was working at UH,” he told me in 2009. “So when they told me to coach, I coach.”

The official party line was that football folded after the 1960 season because of financial problems, including a proposed $32,000 guarantee to bring Oklahoma to Honolulu Stadium. But there’d also been a potential scandal brewing because some players weren’t attending enough classes, Asato said.

That made the re-boot more challenging, but he was up to the task.

“I enjoyed it, probably because of the type of kids we got,” he said. “Not the so-called recruited type of players. They just wanted to play, and we picked them up.”

Some of the notables Asato recalled 13 years ago were Bobby Au, John Carroll and Buzzy Hong — and an Army veteran named Larry Price.

UH was getting close to its first all-intercollegiate schedule when the ’61 season was canceled. The school had a Board of Athletic Control that stipulated the program revert to a less ambitious schedule of mostly local club teams as a condition for football’s return.

In 1962, the Rainbows went 6-2 in Asato’s first season. They were 15-12 in his three years as coach, with more college opponents scheduled each season.

There were rocky times ahead, though, as the next three coaches lasted just one season apiece. But the program survived long enough for Dave Holmes’ arrival in 1968, and his six teams went 46-17-1 against schedules comprised entirely of college foes.

Meanwhile, Asato continued to work his regular job at Manoa, and retired in 1989. He was elected to UH’s sports hall of fame the same year.

A linebacker from Cambridge, Mass., who lettered at UH in 1965 and ’66 was one of Asato’s students.

“He was my instructor in a couple of classes, but more than that he took on a key mentoring role with me, off the field, but related to life and football,” said Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, after attending Friday’s services. “He was a great person for so many. I felt privileged he seemed to genuinely care about how I was progressing as a young student-athlete, and new to Hawaii. He was very special to me.”