Could Chow and UH finally connect this time around?

Of all the candidates — both announced and under the radar — the University of Hawaii might interview for its football head coaching job in the coming days, the most interesting session to sit in on would be one with Norm Chow.

Because to this point Chow and UH make for a curious paradox. How is it in a career that has seen Chow become the most celebrated homegrown college football coach from Hawaii that he has never coached a down for the home team?

There have been 21 games and countless pitched recruiting battles between them. But in 38 years spent on college sidelines on two coasts and some of the biggest stages — a period that takes in three national championships, three Heisman Trophy winners and three national assistant coach of the year awards — UH and Chow haven’t managed to get together for more than one meal?

That being a 1995 sit-down "interview" with the powers-that-were for the UH head coaching job that went to Fred vonAppen.

THERE WAS A TIME when UH tried desperately to hire Chow as an assistant, and many more points where they wished they could have had him banished to French Frigate Shoals, so fierce was the once-upon-a-time series with Brigham Young.

As the point man for BYU’s recruiting here for a quarter century and the guy calling the shots for the offense for many of those years, such were the passions that hung over the series that when Chow’s mother would go to the hairdresser, she’d get an earful about her son and the hated Cougars.

But Chow’s subsequent stops with North Carolina State, USC, the Tennessee Titans, UCLA and Utah have tempered the feelings and enhanced the resume. Maybe they have given both parties pause to look at each other differently.

Now we have a school and a coach from its backyard who, in their present circumstances, understand there might be some common, mutually beneficial ground after all. Enough, at least, to sit down and talk about what they might be able to do for each other.

Whether they are on the same page or could make it work remains to be seen. While UH officials have refused to discuss individual candidates, Chow has so far not deigned to return media calls and Utah is tightly crossing its fingers they don’t get together. Still, signs point to back-channel communication.

Interestingly, despite its financial woes, UH might actually be more able to afford Chow now than at any previous time. Not because the Warriors have come into money — they haven’t — but because the days at USC and in the NFL have left Chow’s financial future secure. His buyout from the Titans alone was reported to be $1.2 million, meaning UH might be able to get him at lower-than-market rates.

The 65-year old Chow has two grandchildren here and people who know him well paint a picture of someone with not only an enduring passion and ability to coach but with an interest in mentoring younger coaches. They say he is interested in coming home to "give back" and complete the full-circle on a career in athletics and coaching that began on the fields of Palolo and Waialua.

Whether that means a stop in Manoa, as a legacy-polishing exclamation point, makes for compelling conversation.

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