Norm Chow showed he's got game during difficult Ute season

SALT LAKE CITY — As Norm Chow tells it, when he accepted the job as offensive coordinator at Southern California in 2001, his wife told him: "Please don't ever take me back to the cold."

Fine. Would Hawaii be OK?

After 39 years as an assistant coach, the Ute offensive coordinator has been offered the job as head coach at Hawaii, which makes entirely too much sense. He was raised in Honolulu, got his first coaching job in 1970 as the head coach at Waialua High.

Hawaii is a program that has had some wide swings, from mediocrity to the Sugar Bowl and back. In the last five years, it has gone 12-1, 5-7, 6-7, 10-4 and 6-7. The latter prompted the resignation of Greg McMackin.

So Chow has some work to do, but he's a natural. Who better to recruit the Islands and keep the players from going to Utah, USC, BYU and points beyond?

Is he ready?

He's been ready for 20 years.

Why Chow has never been a head coach has always been a mystery. He usually chalked it up to a variety of circumstances. He has been called difficult or egotistical, though it didn't show when he was being interviewed. He was usually low key and even slightly self-deprecating. But something didn't mesh with Rick Neuheisel, who would have demoted him at UCLA last year, had he not taken the Utah job.

Chow has appeared on other coaching lists and reportedly once turned down an offer at Kentucky. His name came up in the NFL, as well as at Stanford, North Carolina State and in a previous incarnation at Hawaii. He was mentioned after the Utes fired Chuck Stobart in 1984, but said he had no interest in coaching at a place that treated its coaches that way.

He probably figured the right fit would come along.

Who knew it would be 27 years?

Chow is 65, but that doesn't mean he can't relate to players. When you're a three-time National Assistant Coach of the Year, a former offensive coordinator for three national champions, and you've tutored three Heisman winners, people listen. Even 18-year-olds.

Besides, late career jumps can work out wonderfully. Chuck Daly was 48 before he even got an assistant's job in the NBA, yet went on to coach the original Dream Team and win two NBA championships with the Pistons.