If you didn’t know it before you must by now. The University of Hawaii football program’s future will be based on the ability of coach Norm Chow and his staff to recruit. Consistent recruiting, year-after-year, local and mainland.

Sometimes people forget this isn’t the NFL, where if you have a bad season you get higher draft picks. Losing in college football generally makes recruiting harder. Judging talent is still a challenge, but securing it is the bigger one for most coaches at schools in the midst of or coming off poor seasons.

And the alpha prospects who want to play for an established winner vastly outnumber those willing to be a part of building something from the bottom up.

Everyone UH recruits doesn’t have to be a five-star blue-chipper. But talent procurement must improve drastically and be better than ever, and Chow will have to somehow fend off the BCS powers that want the same cream of the Hawaii high school crop.

The main reason UH is 1-7 and not competitive right now is not because Chow doesn’t know how to coach. He does. It is because UH did not have players ready to step into major roles after starters — many of them of All-WAC caliber — completed their eligibility the past two seasons in which the Warriors went a combined 16-11.

The remaining players would have to adjust to new expectations and new schemes.

Some have adapted, some haven’t. Perhaps the most glaring example of the latter is David Graves, who started at quarterback last year in the run-and-shoot but is now a scout team receiver.

All but the most delusional fans expected losses, many knew there would be more losses than wins. But not lopsided defeats, week after week.

I’m encouraged that this team has hung together, but disappointed there isn’t more apparent week-to-week improvement, and that the Warriors didn’t take advantage of a weak Colorado State team two weeks ago and win a game they should have won. There have been few positives to build upon, and now UH stares down the barrel of Boise State.

Chow said from the start he is willing to adapt; he said it again at Monday’s press conference following Saturday’s 45-10 loss at Fresno State.

He’s sticking with Sean Schroeder at quarterback, which many observers see as pure stubbornness. But Chow also said he isn’t building the foundation for future seasons at the expense of this one.

“One thing we have figured out is we can play faster without a huddle,” he said, and added he’s considering “spreading it out” more.

But his vision for years ahead is to win with physicality.

“I like to think that the type of people we’re going to be able to recruit here in the state of Hawaii are those tough, hard-nosed linemen. I want to establish a tough, hard-nosed running game, a tough, hard-nosed football team, period, that people in Hawaii can identify with.”

If this is possible we don’t know how long it will take. Regardless, the high school players Chow and his staff bring in now had better be special; they will be veterans on a team expected to go up-and-up against Michigan on the road in 2016.

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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783.