University of Hawai'i at Manoa Athletics

Transcription of Norm Chow Intraductory Press Conference

Jim Donovan
Athletics Director, University of Hawa‘i
“Welcome, to what is a very, very beautiful day in paradise. You can feel the excitement in the air…it’s palpable…everybody is coming up to me and coach saying what a great day it is. It’s just really awesome for the University of Hawai‘i and the State of Hawai‘i. Let’s get a couple of housekeeping things out of the way. First thing is, UH football season tickets are on sale right now. You can put a $50 deposit down and you can reserve tickets for the 2012 season. We need you out there. A lot of times people ask, “What is it we can do to help?” I’m telling you right now…buy some football season tickets. When the UH football program does well, all the UH sports programs do well. Go onto our website and go ahead and reserve your tickets for 2012.
 
I’d also like to take this time to thank the committee: Dr. Rockne Freitas, Peter Ho, Bert T. Kobayashi, Duane Kurisu, Dr. Edison Miyawaki, and Jeanne Rolles for their roll and their hard work over the last 16-to-17 days, coming up with what I think is just a phenomenal candidate that we will introduce in a second. I’d also like to thank Glen Sugiyama and the staff at DHR International and I’d also like to thank Carter Chow. Carter is Norm’s son who’s an attorney and acted as his agent right here. I had the opportunity to talk with Coach and Carter for five or six hours on Monday evening, and he is a man of high character, and a man who cares very much for the UH football program.
 
At this time I’d like to introduce Dr. Virginia Hinshaw to provide a welcome on behalf of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.”
 
Dr. Virginia Hinshaw
Chancellorm, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa  
“Aloha. Mele Kalikimaka and we have a Christmas present for everyone here today. We’re going to enthusiastically welcome home a native son who is familiar to so many here--Norm Chow--to serve as our coach of our football team. UH-Manoa looks forward to Coach Chow’s success, and building on both the academic and athletic excellence of our football team, as well as ensuring our strong connections between the University and the community. This position always comes with high expectations by many people and also should come with strong support from everyone—which a program needs as well. And that is my Christmas wish.
 
I’m sure that Coach Chow’s experience, expertise, and passion along with his love and understanding of Hawai‘i—which I call having a Hawaiian heart—will serve him well in this position.
 
Now, I’ve wanted to have a mascot for our team since I arrived. And some folks have suggested a “poi dog” as a mascot. And that might be appropriate, with a coach named “Chow.” I’m sure we will hear many interesting suggestions from very creative people out there.
 
Now, one of the reasons I wear hats, is to be able to tip my hat out of respect to the teams working hard to represent all of us. Though on this occasion, Coach Chow, I tip my hat to you and welcome you into your Manoa ‘ohana. Mahalo.”
 
Jim Donovan
“I didn’t have it in my notes, but I do want to thank the University of Hawai‘i leadership team that helped me as we went through this whole process…Dr. Virginia Hinshaw; president M.R.C. Greenwood; (Board of Regents) chair Eric Martinson and vice-chair James Lee; and Keith Amemiya, the secretary of the Board of Regents—they’ve all been very, very supportive and really helped me get to where we are at today.
 
This person that I’m very, very pleased and happy to introduce…there are so many things that we can focus in on about this individual. But I think some of the key ones are: he is the first Asian-American head coach at a major college football program; he’s tutored three Heisman Trophy quarterbacks; he’s the offensive coordinator of three national championships; he is the offensive coordinator currently for Utah which is playing in the Hyundai Sun Bowl in just a few days; he’s coached at Utah, UCLA, the Tennessee Titans, USC, North Carolina State, BYU, and I think most importantly, he was an offensive guard, just like me. And I told him when I talked with him on Monday, in 1981 and ’82 when I was playing for the Rainbow Warriors, BYU beat us both times—13-3 in 1981 and 39-25 in ’82 when were at Provo. I told him that I was really wondering if we would ever be able to beat BYU. But if you can’t beat ‘em, hire ‘em.
 
The other thing I just want to say, is that when I got a chance listen to the interview and when I talked with him on Monday night, there are just some words that come out that I think describe Norm Chow very well. He’s humble. He has great character. He is a great communicator. He has integrity. He is a leader. He’s very passionate—everybody will learn that. He is grateful. And he is hungry. And he’s moving from one Under Armour school to the best Under Armour representing the whole Pacific region. I’m so very proud to introduce the next head coach of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa football program, Norm Chow.  Merry Christmas Hawai‘i!”
 
Norm Chow
Head Football Coach , University of Hawai‘i
“Thank you Jim. I hope I can hold this together. I’m honored. I’m humbled. And I’m awfully excited to be here, to stand before you as the next football coach of the University of Hawai‘i Rainbow Warriors—I’m going to have to get used to saying that. I would like to thank, president Greenwood, chancellor Hinshaw, James Donovan, the Board of Regents, Rockne Freitas, Peter Ho, Duane Kurisu, Doc Miyawaki, Jeanne Rolles and Bert Kobayashi. We met under a little bit of a ‘cloak and dagger’ the other night. I got into town at 9:30…went into the restroom to wash my face…and met with them at 10, and they were awfully gracious.
 
I’d also like to thank especially my family. My wife is not here with me today, she’s back in Los Angeles tending to sick grandchildren. The stomach flu went through our family in a big hurry. My daughter Maile and her husband Denny live here, both are educators. My son-in-law went to ‘Iolani and teaches at Kamehameha, and I told him that didn’t fit very well in the Chow family. My daughter teaches at Mid-Pacific and they have two beautiful daughters, Kensington and Copeland. My second son, Cameron and his wife live in Manhattan Beach. He is also an educator. He loved the book, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and told me many years ago, that the first time he had a chance to name a son, he’d name him Atticus. So we have Atticus as our grandson. My youngest son is our bachelor. He lives in Los Angeles, and if any of you young ladies are looking for a good catch, he lives right in Hollywood. He designs…well I don’t know what he does, but he designs something. And lastly, my son Carter and his wife Sarah. Sarah’s parents are both here, Abe and Sally. He married a gal locally. Even though all of my children were raised on the mainland, two of them married spouses from here.
 
I need to thank my mother and my father. My mother is 94 and spends half her time in Hawai‘i and half her time in Idaho with her brother. I don’t think you can ever stop to try to please Mom and Dad.
 
I’m excited to get going, I really am. I can’t wait to meet the team. I can’t wait to put a staff together. It’s just an exciting time. I also realize, the responsibilities of a football coach—I’ve been at it a long time. The first of which, we are going to graduate our student athletes. We are going to graduate our student athletes…this is why young people go to school…to prepare themselves for the rest of their lives. Along with graduation, we will hopefully teach them some life lessons…some core values. Football is just this part of life. And the rest of it is this big. Thirdly, we are going to win football games. We are going to win as many football games as we can possibly win. That, I will tell you. We will win football games and we will chase championships. That’s our job. That’s our third responsibility. And our fourth responsibility, and I’m not afraid to say this, is to prepare young people for the NFL. I would hope that every recruit that we bring in here, thinks he can make the NFL. Obviously, very few will, but that is why we go back to responsibility number one, so we can prepare them for the rest of their lives.
 
I also understand the responsibility of putting together a product on a Saturday afternoon that will make all of us and will represent the University of Hawai‘i, and more importantly all of us that represent the State of Hawai‘i will make all of you proud. That, as well is a promise to all of you. I’m fired up. I’m excited, I can’t wait to get going…we’ve kind been held back, we have to hire people and I’ve had to sign this paper and that paper and all that business, but we are anxious to get going. Again I appreciate everybody—appreciate the decision makers, I’m looking forward to this. Thank you, for allowing me to come home.
 
 
Questions
 
“When is your first official day of work?”
 “As soon as I can. I am going back to coach in the Sun Bowl. I feel like I need to, I want to. It’s a dead period, so not a lot can be done recruiting wise. But we will put together a staff as quickly as we can. I was not going to do something until I was able to get the job. So I did not try to put much of it together. So I will now.”
 
“Coach…Norm Chow, being a head coach has been a 38, 39 year journey. How much better is it, that your first opportunity to be a head coach is at home? “
 “It means a whole lot. I get asked a lot of times about head coaching and why I haven’t been. I’m not going to try to brag to you, but I’ve turned down opportunities to do so on the mainland. I’ve always wanted to make sure my family was taken care of. If it wasn’t right for the family, then it wasn’t right for me. A long time ago, my wife and I sat down, and we decided our family was going to be first. And if it meant moving around, I’d get out of the profession. So it just didn’t seem right at the time and it’s easy to make excuses, but my children are grown, and this is home…and it just felt like the right time. I’m grateful to the decision makers for giving me the opportunity.”
 
“For the past decade the identity of the UH football team has been the ‘run and shoot.’ What will be the identity of the football team on offense under Norm Chow…and transversely on defense.”
 “The ‘run and shoot’ is a terrific offense, there are so many nice things that can happen with that. I’m not a “run and shoot” guy. I guess my upbringing is more the pro-style type—using the tight end, running the football. I believe in balance. I believe in keeping it exciting. You’ll see the quarterback under center more than you’ve seen them in the past. A lot of the pass concepts the “run and shoot” provides are still there in the pro-style, drop back style game. Will we throw it every time? Probably not. I think we need to have balance…we need to run it a little bit. That’s what you’ll see. But I think that has to be tempered as well. I think as a coach, one our major, major responsibilities is to magnify the skill of the players that you have so that they can be successful. Let me wait and answer that later. Let’s find out what kind of talent we have…find out what our recruiting base is, and go from there.”
 
“Coach Chow, this is a significant day for a lot of Asian-Americans who have been waiting for a prominent figure, such as yourself, to become a head coach at a major collegiate program. What does it mean for you to be the first Asian-American head coach?”
 “It is an honor. And if you sit back and think about it, there are not that many Asian coaches period. We always laugh that we should have our own coaches group, and there would be four of us—and each one of us would have a title. But it’s important. It’s very important to me. I don’t want to make it sound any different way, but it’s very important.”
 
“Coach, you have a positive history with Polynesian players. Hawai‘i has billed itself as team Polynesia. Will the people of American Samoa, Tonga, and Polynesian players throughout the mainland…will there remain an emphasis on recruiting a lot of those athletes?”
 “Without any question. You recruit from inside out. Regardless of where you are, you start at home. And for years, I’ve come over here to recruit and I’ve told young people to leave home. We are going to start telling them to “stay home” and make us proud. Stay home and make us proud. I’ll have to change my recruiting pitch.”
 
“I know guards on the offensive line weren’t as big in your playing days, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you are lighter than your playing weight in college. You appear to be very physically fit, a lot of people question your age. I think you’re a young 65. Can you talk about that a little bit? What you do to stay in shape?”
 “I’m 65 years old. I’ll out-work any of you. We will have the hardest working coaching staff around. Without question. They will not be hired, if they are not willing to go to work. How did we do it Pal? This is my classmate Pal Eldredge. We went to school together…played football together, played basketball together, and we played baseball together. He was my catcher. I pitched and he caught and he would signal only one pitch because that was all I could throw. How did we do it Pal? Just do it, right? Nice to see you.”
 
“Back to your Punahou days, did the late Charley Ane have any influence on any of your spirit or toughness of coming from the islands. Has that carried with you?”
 “You know what, one my favorite pro coaches once said, “We stand on the shoulders of the great men that have gone before us.” I can tell you, two of the greatest men that helped me along the way—who both recently passed—Pal’s brother Dave and Coach Ane. He will never be Charley Ane, he is always Coach Ane. We played football at Punahou. I swore he didn’t know my name. He called me “Ah-sook.” But when I finally realized what he was about. It took me some time…he was hard on us, wasn’t he Pal? He was hard on us. And it finally dawned on me, that the reason he was, was he wanted what was best for us. He wanted what was best for us. He wanted us to go to school. He wanted us to go to college. He wanted us to get an education. He wanted us to play college football. I can remember my senior year, our last game was in the old Honolulu Stadium. I played for the University of Utah, we played the University of Hawai‘i and I saw coach after the game, and he was still on me…I was too slow pulling. But yes, a long answer to a simple question, there are certain people that I admire, that I salute, and those are two, besides our basketball coach and our baseball coach.”
 
“You mentioned your coaching staff. How many names do you have in mind, and what will the process will be like?”
“I obviously understand—being a life-long assistant—how important your staff is. We will talk to the fellows that are here, somehow or other we will get to doing that. I do have some people in mind. Obviously, it’s a process that will go on for a little bit. We will recruit good recruiters. We will recruit good recruiters. We will have good recruiters on our staff because recruiting is the lifeline of what we do. It’s the most important thing we do other than the coordinators.”
 
“In addition to hard work, how would you describe your leadership style?”
“Demanding. They will be prepared to play football. Those who survive will be prepared to play football. Are there any players in the back? Did you all hear that?”
 
“Not to take away from this day…you being named head coach. But what’s Day 2 going to be like when you realize that you’re opening up the season at USC with Matt Barkley who has announced that he will be coming back next year?”
 “As I said earlier, it is an exciting time. But the enthusiasm has to be tempered understanding the task that is at hand. The hard work that is going to be necessary to compete in the Coliseum. And I’ve competed in the Coliseum many times. And I understand a couple of weeks after that it’s BYU at Provo. I get that. I’ve been coaching for a long time. But how much more exciting does it get than that? How much bigger a challenge do you want? And if you didn’t like challenges you shouldn’t be in the business. You shouldn’t be in the business. “
 
“What kind of transition for you…with all those years up in the booth, and all of those years as an assistant…now you’re going to be down on the field as a head coach. What about the transition into the head coaching position for you, what do you anticipate?”
 “My friend Robert Kekaula told me, that his biggest concern was that as I walked on the field I didn’t trip…because I didn’t know how to get down there. It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be fun. I think what’s really critical—I told my son this coming over this morning—I really need to study clock management. I’ve only studied clock management on one side of the ball. You know what I mean? In the National Football League, the head coach allows the offensive coordinator to make every clock management decision that there is to be made. But now, I’m going have to make sure that I understand the entire game. But again, it’s a challenge. And what is life without an exciting challenge and an experience that we are dying looking forward to.”
 
“Coach is there a defensive principle or philosophy that you are partial to?”
“If there’s a philosophy in football—here’s the entire philosophy—we will take care of the ball. And I mean our players, the first thing I tell them is that this is the most important thing we have, to take care of this football. To take care of it on offense, and to take it away when we are on defense. It will be a very aggressive style…a lot of man-to-man coverage…you better be able to pick-up the blitzes when you see us play.”
 
“You have a unique position of being on the outside looking in at UH. When you heard from your football colleagues talking about UH did you ever hear any opinions that you’d say, you know what, I’d like to change that if I got the opportunity to coach UH. Is there anything that was said about the University you heard in recent years, you know I don’t necessarily agree with that.”
“I don’t think so. I think they’ve played an exciting brand of football here. They played good hard-nosed defense. The problem with University of Hawai‘i football has been to me the fact that by the time they play the game it’s awfully late in the East. That you wish you could change. But that’s above my pay scale. But I don’t think there was anything negative. I think their reputation was as a tough, hard-nosed group that played an exciting brand of offensive football with June and the other coaches that have been able to do that.”
 
“There’s been some talk coming from Ohio State that they’d like to play Hawai‘i at the end of this season. Any thoughts on that?”
 “Bring them on. Bring them on. Bring everybody on. Why would you want to go play other people? We are going to try to be the best we can be and let’s go play the best we can play. Our motto will be, we are going to be the best we can possibly be. And we’ll let it ride from that.”
 
“In all these years that you’ve had to recruit Hawai‘i kids to leave Hawai‘i, are you under the belief that you can keep half of those kids home…Hawai‘i would be a much better football program?”
 “Robert, without question. As I’ve said, you have to start recruiting inside out. Without question, every team in the PAC-12 as you go down the coast, has players from Hawai‘i. The second to the last school I was at, we recruited a young man out of here. It was almost too easy. And we thought he was a pretty good player. And I finally asked him, “Is the University of Hawai‘i recruiting you?” and he said no. And I thought, why would you not recruit this young man, he was a major college football player at a PAC-12 school. And I don’t know that, and I’m going to find out though. The first thing we are going to do, when we come on board, I can’t do it because as a head coach you can’t go out. But I’ve already told one of the guys that will hopefully be with me, his first job when he lands is to drive right to Laie. Why would you not. Why would you not. It would be silly not to. So I think you can. You all remember Kurt Gouveia, those of you who are older. He came to BYU only because he had no where else to go. He wanted to go to the University of Hawai‘i. He wanted to go, he would not come with us until he realized that Hawai‘i was not going to recruit him. Now people make mistakes recruiting, I understand all that. The key to recruiting is evaluation. Hopefully we will evaluate properly.”
 
“Will you continue to call plays as the head coach, or will you delegate to a coordinator?”
 “Give me a chance to figure that one out. It depends on who we hire. It’s going to take a little time to work that through.”
 
“Coach, you mentioned Rainbow Warriors earlier. Are you bringing the Rainbow back?”
You know we talked about that. My brother played here in the late 60’s and they had the green unis with the rainbow on the sleeve. Any of you remember that?  It was fun to see. I don’t know. Like I said, it’s above my pay grade, I’ll defer that to those that make the decisions.
 
“What is the difference between being in the press box calling plays making your decisions? How will it be different from a field perspective? Is it harder?”
“It will be huge. Upstairs, you put your game plan up against the wall and throw darts at it. Whatever dart you hit, that’s the play you call. There won’t be a dart board on the field. So it’ll be different, and I’ll have to rely on another set of eyes upstairs if we decide to do it.”
 
“In your wildest dreams would you have come full circle? Any comments on being the head coach at Waialua on the North Shore to being the head coach at the University of Hawai‘i?”
 “How many people get to say they do that? How many people are fortunate enough to go full circle. And I’m blessed. I’m honored and I know that. I say my prayers every morning and I’m grateful for that. I started at Waialua High School in 1970, and to get a chance to come home is just a treat. It’s an honor and a privilege. And I’m never, never ever going to forget that.”
 
Were you willing to leave some money on the table so you can hire some of your staff?
Money has nothing to do with this. It has absolutely nothing to do with this. I had a chance to come home, I have a chance to represent this University, I have a chance to represent the state, I have to hopefully be an example to some. Money has nothing to do with that. How much can you pay for that?