The first rule about athletic salaries is that when somebody says it’s not about the money, it usually means it’s all about the money.

The second rule is to hold onto your wallet. Tight.

But Norm Chow, the University of Hawaii’s new football coach, might be the rarest of exceptions, meaning what he says. Early impressions are encouraging.

In signing on for what we’re told is half of his predecessor’s annual $1.1 million salary, Chow opened some eyes by not demanding UH open wide its tattered billfold and send a posse to scour the seat cushions for remaining small change.

Make no mistake about it, it is more than the $275,000 he is making as an offensive coordinator at Utah. And it is still some major bucks at UH, where independent auditors continue to write in red ink and liberally apply the word “fragile” in the annual financial report.

But for someone with Chow’s long and distinguished resume — a role in three national championships and three Heisman Trophy winners in addition to three national assistant-coach-of-the-year awards — it is an enticing deal.

One that would have seemed a fool’s errand had the notion of him heading to Manoa been floated a year or even a month ago.

Consider, for example that it has been 8 1/2 years, amid the final days of June Jones’ first contract, since UH has paid less than that for a head football coach. Or that the national average for a head coach in major college football was $1.47 million this past season.

Ridiculous numbers to be sure if you are UH, where the average turnstile attendance this past season was a meager 28,194 and the future of local pay-per-view television is uncertain.

When Carter Chow, the Los Angeles-based agent/son of Norm, told UH officials a deal might be able to be done within the Warriors’ modest means there was skepticism. When UH was assured it wouldn’t cost the school an arm and a leg, officials began wondering what other body parts might have to be sold.

When Team Chow said it wouldn’t be all about the money, UH officials prepared for the worst.

But when talk increasingly centered on what could be done to improve salaries for assistants, at least incrementally, even if it meant taking something off the table for the head coach, well, UH officials had to catch their breath.

A commitment to winning was refreshing, especially when it didn’t double the debt or include all charter flights.

Having been an assistant coach for 38 years, “Dad knows it takes a lot of people to build a winning program,” Carter Chow said of the push to improve salaries for assistants.

The 65-year old Chow has done well over the past few years in drawing paychecks at USC, with the Tennessee Titans and at UCLA. A reported $1.2 million buyout from the Titans goes a long way when you are thrifty the way he is. His four children are grown and there is the opportunity to return home and take up a new challenge.

And, maybe, as Carter Chow says, this is a way to also “inspire others and give something back to a community that has instilled the values that helped Dad become who he is.”

That would make Chow the rarest of catches indeed.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.