Hawaii fires head coach Norm Chow
Norm Chow is the latest coach to meet the firing line as the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors fired the longtime college coach on Sunday.
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The writing was on the wall for Norm Chow entering his fourth season as the head coach of the Rainbow Warriors with an 8-29 record since he was hired in 2012. But as many coaches will tell you, they’re only hired so they can be fired some day, and that day came today for Chow who was fired after losing 58-7 to Air Force.
Former Colorado Buffaloes offensive guard and New Orleans Saints first round pick, Chris Naeole will serve as the team’s interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
“I’d like to thank Coach Chow for his dedication to our football program for the past four years,” Hawaii athletic director David Matlin said in a release. “Ultimately, we feel this decision is in the best interest of the University and Athletics Department and we need to move in a different direction. Coach Chow should be commended for helping our football program achieve all-time highs in APR scores and graduation rates.”
All-time highs in APR scores and graduation rates are a wonderful quality for a head coach, but the most important stat and the primary reason Chow was fired was he is only 10-36 as head coach and that’s just not good enough.
Hawaii can be a tricky place to win, but you can have success there as we saw when June Jones was the head coach there. If the school can find an offensive innovator, this program can return to the success they envisioned not too long ago.
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Chow’s greatest success came when he was the offensive coordinator on Pete Carroll’s staff with the USC Trojans when he helped Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush win the Heisman Trophy. He also won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach in 2002.
Chow was a longtime BYU assistant where he coached from 1973-1999 before leaving for NC State, then USC, Tennessee Titans, UCLA, Utah and finally Hawaii.
With Chow’s firing there will now be 10 FBS openings at the end of the year with Illinois, Maryland, Miami, Minnesota, North Texas, South Carolina, UCF, USC, Virginia Tech (Frank Beamer is retiring) and Hawaii.