Some of you will be disappointed. You want an outraged rant, you want another column detailing why coach Norm Chow should be immediately relieved of his duties as the University of Hawaii football coach.
But doing that again right now would just be piling on.
UH is either going to fire Chow or it isn’t. It might happen today. I think that is very likely. But since the university has given him so much more rope than is standard for a Division I college football coach, we all have a lingering doubt.
Athletic director David Matlin, Manoa chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman and whoever else decides can see and they can count. The number of losses keeps going up and the number of people going to the games keeps going down.
By now it must be obvious to them that regardless of the financial cost of a buyout, the revenue football generates to help pay for just about every other sport at UH is taking a serious hit with every home game.
Three of the remaining four games are at home. A change of leadership probably won’t fill the stadium, but it can slow the bleeding.
Everybody could see what transpired at Aloha Stadium on Saturday — well, at least the little more than 10,000 who showed up to see Air Force put a 58-7 pounding on the Rainbow Warriors did.
It was one of the uglier of the 36 losses since Chow became the UH coach in 2011. Actually, it’s one of the ugliest in program history. Especially against a conference opponent. Especially at home.
And it was administered by a team that many of us (including me) thought before the season that Hawaii should beat.
Instead, this is Hawaii’s seventh loss, and the magic number is zero — it is now a mathematical impossibility for UH to put together its first winning season since 2010.
Yes, once again, every break seemed to go against the Warriors. But not 51 points worth of breaks.
Everything went against Hawaii, but some of it was because of basic stuff. Like ball security. Like playing to the whistle.
It was obvious from the get-go which team came ready to play football. And it’s true academy teams might not be the most physically gifted, but they go hard from whistle to gun. If you don’t show up, they’ll start without you and they might make you look silly.
"They’re always ready to play," Chow said. "I thought we were ready to play."
Hawaii should have had more than enough motivation.
It needed to win in order to keep its very slim hopes for a winning season alive, as well as the possibility for the only bowl game in the seniors’ career.
And, regardless what the players say publicly, they all know the coach’s job — make that the coaches’ jobs — becomes more tenuous with each loss.
Air Force’s efficiency in running the option was nothing new for fans who remember the Falcons as a UH nemesis in the old Western Athletic Conference.
There were games when they beat Hawaii with their wishbone, but nothing like this. And there were also games that the Rainbows won. No one who saw it will ever forget Robert Lan pulling a loose ball out of midair and running it back 91 yards to give UH a 19-14 win over Air Force at Aloha Stadium in 1988.
Memories like that are much more pleasant than asking Chow about his future after these losses. But we have to do it.
"Talk to me about the game," was his reply this time. "That (crap) gets old."
The Rainbow Warrior fans have made it clear losing gets old to them. We will learn today if it’s gotten old enough for those who make the decisions at UH.
Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads
