PROVO, Utah >> After Hawaii had beaten Brigham Young University in back-to-back games in Honolulu in 1989 and ’90, Cougars football coach LaVell Edwards said he was so sure of victory in Provo that he vowed to jump off the 11,749-foot peak of nearby Mt. Timpanogos if UH managed an upset.

That Edwards will be celebrating his 82nd birthday in two weeks tells you how that turned out.

The current BYU coach, Bronco Mendendall, has uttered no such pledges about today’s 2 p.m. (Hawaii time) nationally televised game. Possibly because the Cougars and their fans have come to view their towering home, the 63,470-seat LaVell Edwards Stadium, as inviolate when it comes to UH.

If the Warriors really want to reignite the emotionally charged series that once was UH vs. BYU, this is the place to do it. Win here and you get the blue-clad faithful’s attention. The unfortunate head coach gets the ire.

The Cougars have won 77 percent of their games here against all comers and 84 percent under Mendenhall. They’ve won 100 percent against UH.

Nestled up against the Wasatch Range here at 4,553 feet, the den of the Cougars has been impervious to assault by these Warriors from sea level. In eight previous tries, UH has not won here. No other place has UH visited as often and remained winless. Rarely has it even come close.

The one time it did, a 41-38 loss in 1993, Carlton Oswalt’s field-goal attempt banged off the goal posts as if to underline the futility of UH’s hopes here.

UH has won up the road at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and even higher up in the clouds (4,600 feet) in Logan at Utah State. Yet, paydirt Provo eludes them.

Today, Norm Chow becomes the sixth UH head coach in 61 years to venture forth here. In his case it is an especially intriguing proposition since, for six of those games against UH, he was one of the protectors of the realm as a BYU assistant coach and lived maybe 2 miles from the stadium.

Chow has seen UH teams struggle for breath in the light air. He has witnessed normally sure-handed receivers fail to get a grip in the dryness and glimpsed players get wide-eyed and disoriented in front of the thunderous blue-and-white clad crowds.

And that was before this year’s addition of new video walls and LED ribbons on the north and south end zone grandstands.

Yet Chow does not speak to them of the forbidding surroundings, a challenging environment or what oddsmakers say is an all-but-impossible mission.

In the face of history — and a role as a 27 1⁄2-point underdog on the Las Vegas betting lines  — he speaks of opportunity, excitement and even fun.

“It is a beautiful stadium in a beautiful city,” Chow said. “The crowd really gets into the game. It is going to be fun for our guys to see what a major college stadium is really all about,” Chow said.

He might be the first UH head football coach to use “fun” and LaVell Edwards Stadium in the same sentence.

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