Hawai’i returns to altitude with new heights on horizon for Chang era

HONOLULU – Coaching trees are funny.

They have multiple branches, and sometimes, have multiple trunks.

Hawai’i head coach Timmy Chang is an example of this: with Run-N-Shoot roots, Chang is associated with his former head coach in June Jones, who gave the former UH star his start in the coaching ranks as an offensive graduate assistant at SMU.

But Chang also credits another coach in his development as an HC: Jay Norvell.

“[He] is one of the best coaches I’ve been around,” Chang said of the Colorado State head man. “We’re going to have a big hug [before the game] and we’re going to go to battle … I know he’s going to get that team ready to go and we’ll have our team ready to go.”

Norvell took Chang’s post-playing career to another level when he offered him a job with Nevada as a position coach. After working together with the Wolfpack for nearly half a decade, Norvell accepted a job with CSU and planned to take Chang with him to Fort Collins.

That was, until the Hawai’i head coaching job opened up and Norvell made it clear that the Rainbow Warriors needed to hire Chang.

“As soon as I heard that job was open, I called that AD and told him there’s only one guy you need to hire and that’s Timmy Chang,”  Norvell recalled while speaking to media earlier in the week.

The rest is history.

Chang took over a UH program in the depths of college football hell, jumping from position coach to overseeing an entire staff at his alma mater freshly after turning 40 years old. In three years and some change since, the former record-setting college signal caller has helped return the program from those pits of irrelevance to the cusp of postseason eligibility.

“The biggest transformation you can see in their football team is their mental toughness down the stretch,” Norvell said of the 2025 Rainbow Warriors. “They’re winning games in the fourth quarter.”

Less than a month after going into elevation and displaying that mental toughness in a high-flying win over Air Force, Hawai’i (5-2, 2-1 Mountain West) returns to higher altitude this weekend with eyes on an encore performance against Norvell and Colorado State. A victory for the Rainbow Warriors would mark the quickest that UH has gotten to six wins since the 2018 season, clinch eligibility for a bowl game and guarantee a .500 or better record for the first time in Chang’s tenure.

It’s also the last chance to play against Colorado State as a conference rival.

The Rams, along with Utah State, Boise State, San Diego State and Fresno State, will all depart from the Mountain West for the Pac-12 following the conclusion of the 2025-26 academic year.

The first half of the Colorado State schedule presented plenty of challenges for Norvell’s group, getting off to a 1-4 start with a nail-biting victory over FCS program Northern Colorado keeping the Rams from being winless through five weeks.

Vibes shifted around in Fort Collins last weekend when redshirt sophomore QB Jackson Brousseau and the Rams defense balled out against Fresno State. Brousseau, who was making his third straight start for Colorado State after Norvell benched third-year starter Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, had an efficient 144 passing yards and three touchdowns while completing 12-of-18 passes.

The CSU defense forced four turnovers (3 INT, 1 FR) and sacked EJ Warner five times on the way to a 49-21 beatdown of the Bulldogs, showing signs of life for the Rams as the Rainbow Warriors come to town.

Despite the lackluster record for Colorado State, Hawai’i has stayed consistent on preparation and the mentality entering the weekend.

“In the Mountain West, the parity and the closeness in these games, you really got to be in the moment,” Chang said on Tuesday. “You got to have the guys ready to go each and every day, go win today.”

Practices once again simulated the extra fatigue that the Rainbow Warriors can expect to face from playing 5,003 feet above sea level on Saturday. Leaning on similar preparation as the Air Force game, Chang hopes to have UH ready for the multitude of looks and different situations that the weekend will bring.

A victory for the Rainbow Warriors blooms the program into a new height of bowl eligibility. In a way, it’s only right that the first chance Chang gets to clinch a postseason spot with his program comes against his coaching mentor.

Make no mistake though – Norvell would be more than happy to delay UH’s celebration and return from national obscurity for another couple weeks.

In the third and final matchup as conference rivals between the two friends, the last question left before the weekend is super simple.

Does the branch or the trunk take the head-to-head tie breaker?