We can all only hope to earn the title “special assistant” some day. Not the kind that actually works, the kind where the suits just want you to hang out at parties once in awhile, or maybe give advice on a good Italian restaurant. Like “consultant,” but more “special.”

I wouldn’t even need to be paid. It’s the coolest job, if you can call it that. In work pressure, it ranks somewhere right up there with “professor emeritus.” You know how life is 80 percent showing up? Special assistants of the kind I’m talking rarely even have to do that.

The hardest thing for Steve Spurrier as new special assistant to the University of South Carolina president and athletic director will be hiding his famous grimace while tanking in golf against potential big donors.

In case you haven’t got it yet: He is NOT walking away from $4 million a year. When the Head Ball Coach announced this week he’s hanging up the visor, some Hawaii fans got more excited than kids on a Halloween sugar-rush.

“See! See!! SEE!!!” If Steve Spurrier can do the honorable thing and retire, why can’t Norm Chow???”

(That “do the honorable thing” phrase makes me sick; it’s the same one cretins threw out there when they wanted Chow to use his wife’s illness as an excuse to resign last year.)

The answer is simple: Unlike Spurrier, Chow has no clause in his contract that allows him to retire into money for nothing. Unless he and athletic director David Matlin come up with some kind of compromise, if Chow steps down as coach by his own will he also steps down from receiving paychecks.

Apparently many candidates for sainthood sit among us at Aloha Stadium and in sports bars watching UH football. Like last year, I got emails from virtuous fans after Saturday’s 28-14 home loss to San Diego State. They claim if they were on the hot seat like Chow with a 10-33 record, they would voluntarily give up the last year and a half of a $550,000 annual salary … because, “Well, things just aren’t working out and I’m just not very good at this head coaching thing.” Some actually said they’ve made similar sacrifices in their own lives before. Hmmm.

But I get it. Hey, I once cut bait at a lucrative dream job I wasn’t good at. Back in the 1990s, my moral compass forced me to resign from the Disney Store for the public good. I sucked at folding sweaters, so the only honorable thing was to give someone else a chance. It would be tough-going without the $5.45 an hour, but the Mickey Mouse fanbase deserved someone who could ring up their purchases faster. So I made the sacrifice and am a better man now for it.

It gives me the gumption today to say again that if UH doesn’t win at least one of its next two games, it will be time to part ways with Chow as coach. If it means calling it a retirement and paying him his buyout, so be it; we’ve been through that charade before, we’re numb to it. But at least have him “work” it off as a special assistant.

After all, it’s good enough for Steve Spurrier.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quickreads.