After the way the University of Hawaii football team fell apart Saturday night against Utah State, en masse, at home, it’s hard to picture the Rainbow Warriors (2-7) pulling it together and finishing the season with more than three wins, total.

I would love for UH to prove me right and wrong at the same time by somehow coming up with a win at Colorado State this week.

Right, because in the preseason I picked the game at Fort Collins, Colo., to be Hawaii’s only road win of the year. And anyone with anything to do with the program needs something to feel good about after one of the worst weeks in UH sports history, with fallout from the NCAA basketball investigation hitting Manoa hard.

Wrong, because, well … how can anyone now logically conclude that UH — loser of three in a row and 16 consecutive on the road — will beat the Rams? CSU is 8-1, including 4-0 at home. Its only loss was at Boise State, on Sept. 6.

UH does get a boost in the return of running back Joey Iosefa after serving a three-week suspension for a suspicion of DUI arrest. He may be rusty, but the ankle injury that kept him out since the third week of the season should be fully healed.

But the Rams have a superb ground pounder of their own in Alabama transfer Dee Hart. He scored four touchdowns while rushing for 104 yards in Saturday’s win at San Jose State.

At any rate, Iosefa can’t do it by himself. You can argue that’s how he got hurt, by UH relying on him to do too much on that futile dump-off on fourth-and-long against Oregon State.

Unless Hawaii rallies for a miracle stretch run it will be time for a coaching change — and this is regardless of claims that UH doesn’t have the money to do it. It will lose more in the long run if it does NOT find the funds to buy out Norm Chow after three years of averaging less than three wins per season.

Ideally, those from the upper campus administration and the business community who put him in place over the then-athletic director’s recommendation would own up and ante up and work toward this change. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that.

I agree with Star-Advertiser assistant sports editor Sjarif Goldstein that those clamoring loudest for change should put some money where their mouths are. He’s the first I’ve noticed to point out a relatively easy way to attempt this exists now because of technology.

The concept is crowd-funding and it can be done on websites such as Kickstarter and Go Fund Me.

Maybe it’s not fair for the rank-and-file to have to try to make up for a mistake by power brokers. But if you really want change you have to start somewhere.

And maybe it’s not realistic to expect a quarter of a million dollars to come from "We Get ‘Em" type pledges … that grassroots campaign is best described as sluggish.

The opposite tack of nonsupport surely sends a message, too. But, so far, UH’s non-response to a continually rising number of complaints corresponding with declining attendance doesn’t indicate that message is being received.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.