Only Sarkisian and Chow know what went wrong

SEATTLE » When prompted, University of Washington head football coach Steve Sarkisian can provide glowing chapter and verse about the value of a Norm Chow coaching education and make it sound like the grateful testimonial of an MIT graduate.

He will tell you about high-powered offensive schemes learned, the care and handling of quarterbacks and even the timely springing of trick plays.

What he can’t tell you is the last time the two spoke civilly. What he won’t tell you is why.

“I don’t need to get into the personal side of it,” Sarkisian said on a Pac-12 teleconference this week.

Where Chow and Sarkisian were once joined at the playbook, they are now one of the most curious and, so far, unexplained disconnects of college coaching.

Chow recruited Sarkisian to Brigham Young from community college, coached him for two years and then took him to USC as an assistant where, for a while at least, they were a close and productive team.

But ask Chow, the most accomplished Hawaii-bred football coach, about the current state of the relationship with his one-time star pupil and he says, “That’s easy. I don’t have one.”

Seek an explanation and you are told, “I don’t waste my breath on it” though acquaintances say “loyalty” issues are involved.

A lot will understandably be made this week of Chow’s return against USC as Utah’s offensive coordinator. After all, in four years as offensive coordinator, Chow’s offense helped take the Trojans to two championships and produced two Heisman Trophy winners. And there was plenty of behind-the-scenes intrigue involving Lane Kiffin, now the Trojans’ head coach, who worked under Chow and eventually succeeded him.

Both Kiffin and Chow have soft soaped it like a car wash this week. “There was nothing wrong; we worked together for four years,” Chow said.

Kiffin said, “Norm was very easy to work with.”

Their noses might have grown some while they were saying it.

Clearly, then-USC head coach Pete Carroll had issues with the adulation that came Chow’s way and wanted someone who wasn’t going to intrude on his limelight. Kiffin, the son of Carroll’s mentor, Monte Kiffin, fit the bill. Chow took the hint — and the Tennessee Titans’ cash — in moving to the NFL and eventually on to UCLA and Utah.

But up north here, where the University of Hawaii meets Sarkisian’s Huskies on Saturday, there are no such pretensions about the parting of mentor and student. Just as there is no mention of Chow in the 41-paragraph official Sarkisian biography and little acknowledgement of the protege’s success by the master.

Sarkisian tells a story about the first game he played for Chow at BYU, an appearance against Air Force in 1995. “We were both pretty fiery, emotional guys and we went at it over the headset pretty good, screaming at one another.” After the game Sarkisian said, “I suggested we could still scream at each other, but said, ‘Let’s do it face-to-face on the field.’ For the rest of my two years at BYU, he coached me from the sidelines and it worked great.”

Maybe, they need to go scream at each other again, you know, face-to-face.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-8620.