No buyout is coming, so Chow just keeps working

Let’s get this straight: Norm Chow isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Well, other than on Mountain West Conference road trips to Colorado State, San Jose State and Fresno State, of course.

Fact is, unless he does an about face and decides he wants out, the University of Hawaii’s head football coach will probably outlast some other people around the tempest-tossed UH athletic department.

Yes, he is 2-6 this year and 6-26 over three seasons, including 2-17 in the not-all-that-fearsome MWC.

Most places in major college football that means the moving vans are rolling. But, this being UH, poverty can be both a curse and a blessing for a coach.

On one hand, you don’t have the money you want to get the job done, but, on the other, there isn’t the wherewithal to buy you out all that early either.

The relevant numbers in this equation at the moment are $2.5 million-$3 million and $750,000.

The first is the amount of a budget deficit the athletic department is expected to accumulate this fiscal year. The second, $750,000, is how much additional debt it would stand to accrue per his contract ($550,000 for 2015 and $200,000 for 2016) if Chow is relieved this year at the conclusion of the third year of a five-year agreement.

At places such as Alabama, where they hustled up $3.1 million to buy a new house for head coach Nick Saban — an uncontracted "thank you" on top of his $7 million annual salary — $750,000 is peanuts and can be raised by passing the hat on a Saturday afternoon.

At UH, it is heavy lifting.

Spending $750,000 now might well save a couple times that in the long run, but where will it come from? UH President David Lassner previously said the upper campus won’t underwrite the athletic department’s shaky finances, suggesting the community or state Legislature step up.

But asking either of them to pitch in on yet another coach’s buyout isn’t going to go very far. Want to see — and hear — some real hard-nosed football? Try getting six figures past state Sen. Donna Kim.

Which brings us to Chow, who maintained last year he wasn’t quitting. Sunday he reaffirmed his "I’ll never quit. I’m not a quitter" pledge to the Star-Advertiser’s Stephen Tsai and his actions, to date, are consistent with that stance.

If Chow was really on pins and needles about his job, he’d be yanking guys off redshirt status or shaking up his coaching staff. But he isn’t.

He’s sticking to the script like a guy who expects to get at least four years and is intent on doing the job he signed up for.

And, while hardheaded in the manner of the old offensive lineman Chow is, there’s also something noble about a guy resolutely determined to see the task through, however Sisyphian.

On the last road trip, when one of the buses failed to show up and everybody crammed into the lone one to get to practice in San Diego, Chow shook his head and said he would someday write a book. Every stop in his career, Chow said, would have its own chapter.

Whether we like it or not, the UH chapter isn’t finished just yet.

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