There should be a rule: If a guy is the offensive AND defensive high school football player of the year, that state’s college football team should be at his doorstep with a scholarship offer.
The only question asked should be, "Which side of the ball would you like to try first, young man?"
If University of Hawaii coaches had assumed that the best prep player in the state in 1980 was worthy of a tuition waiver, that whole BYU-UH thing might have taken a different turn earlier than 1989, when the Rainbows finally broke a 10-game losing streak against the Cougars.
Kurt "Ola" Gouveia of Waianae was deemed a half-step too slow and a half-inch too short by UH. But BYU assistant and lead Hawaii recruiter Norm Chow didn’t see it that way, and the islands’ best went to Provo, Utah.
Begrudgingly.
"No question," said Gouveia, in a phone interview Tuesday. "I was fixated on playing in front of my family. I loved the Rainbows."
He learned to love the Cougars, and he loved winning a national championship in 1984. And he loved those two Super Bowl wins with the Washington Redskins during a 13-year NFL career.
Although the timing would be right since today is national letter of intent signing day, Gouveia’s background of unwanted to undaunted is not related here as another cautionary tale of recruiting being more about the so-called measurables.
No, today we talk about Kurt Gouveia because 34 years later UH has a second chance at the one who got away.
Technically, we could call it a third chance or even a fourth, since Gouveia served on the Warriors staff as a student assistant in 2002 and again in 2004. But those were basically internships for a guy making the transition from player to coach. Now, he’s a candidate — the leading candidate, from the rumblings we hear out Manoa way — for the open job as linebackers coach.
Now, age 49 and 13 years removed from retirement as a player, Gouveia has also paid dues as a linebackers coach with the Berlin Thunder and Rhein Fire of NFL Europe and most recently the Sacramento Mountain Lions of the UFL.
He could be the perfect guy at the perfect time for UH football.
I’m among the many who were unhappy that Tony Tuioti — the only UH football alumnus on the coaching staff — was relieved of his duties after last season. He has since landed in Cleveland, where he is now assistant defensive line coach for the Browns. So good for Tuioti, whom everyone agrees is a good guy and most agree is a good coach.
Gouveia would be a fine choice as his replacement. The recent inductee to the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame has credentials as a championship winner at every level of football, from Pee Wee to the NFL. He has local and national connections to recruit. He stuck with it to get a college degree in 2008. He has experience coaching the position he played so well.
"My goal is to come back home now to the people who supported me," he said. "I know I’ve got a lot I can teach (the players). I can be useful."
UH football missed on Kurt Gouveia as a player. A reunion now for him with the coach who did not miss, Norm Chow, would be a big positive for a program that needs as many as it can get.
