HONOLULU — To this day, Timmy Chang still isn’t entirely sure how it happened.

One of the most prolific offensive players in NCAA football history was in his mid-30s, grinding it out as an offensive coordinator at Division III Emory and Henry College in Virginia.

One December day after the 2016 season, the phone rang. It was Jay Norvell, the brand-new coach at the University of Nevada, who was building his first staff at a Football Bowl Subdivision program. Norvell wanted Chang as his inside receivers coach.


What You Need To Know

  • Coming off its first Mountain West Conference win of the season over Nevada, the Hawaii football team prepares to head to Fort Collins, Colo., to face Colorado State at Canvas Stadium on Saturday

  • It will be a second straight week of reunions for UH coach Timmy Chang, who got his first full FBS assistant coaching job at Nevada under Jay Norvell, who accepted the CSU job in the offseason

  • Chang followed Norvell to Fort Collins for about a month and helped recruit several players there before accepting the UH coaching job in January with Norvell's glowing recommendation to UH administration

  • UH is preparing for a physical battle in 5,000 feet of altitude between two programs that faced a full rebuild job this season

The two had never met, but in a matter of days, Chang had his first full-time assistant job at an FBS institution.

Looking back to that pivotal moment when Chang toiled in relative obscurity at an East Coast school that few on this side of the Rocky Mountains knew existed — why him?

“You know, I never asked. I never asked,” Chang said to that question Tuesday after UH practice. “It’s funny because I got a call. I was getting married on, I believe, the 16th. I was taking a flight from Virginia to Reno, Nevada, and that was my honeymoon, and that’s how it started.”

Five years later, and with Norvell’s glowing recommendation, Chang had the first FBS head coaching job of his own, at his alma mater, Hawaii.

Chang and the Rainbow Warriors (2-5, 1-1 Mountain West) are preparing for a second straight weekend of reunions coming off a 31-16 win over Nevada, as they will head to Fort Collins, Colo., to face Norvell’s new team, Colorado State (1-5, 1-1), at 10 a.m. Hawaii time on Saturday. The Rams are five-point favorites at Canvas Stadium, which sits at the highest altitude (5,003 feet) that UH will encounter this season.

Chang said he expects Saturday’s game to be about the fundamentals — tackling, blocking and stopping the run. To conclude practice at the Ching Complex, he directed his players to run sideline-to-sideline gassers to help prepare for the altitude.

“It’s going to be one of them chess matchup games where we know what each other’s going to do, but let’s see who, as Coach Norvell would say, who flinches first," Chang said.

“Our mindset when we coached together was, ‘Don’t flinch. Play the next play and don’t worry about it.’”

Jay Norvell is off to a 1-5 start at Colorado State, his second FBS head coaching job. (AP Photo/Tom R. Smedes)

Norvell accepted the CSU job in the offseason after posting a 33-26 record at Nevada and Chang, a flexible member of his offensive staff who’d also coached tight ends, followed him there for a month before the UH position emerged as a possibility.

At the Mountain West Conference media days in 2017, prior to his first game at UN, Norvell shed some light on how their first meeting came to be: Chang was a name in his world.

The former NFL defensive back and linebacker said, “As a fan of college football, I knew him as a player and had high respect and high regard for all he accomplished as a player.” In particular, Norvell lauded Chang’s career passing numbers at Hawaii, a former NCAA-record 17,072 yards to go with 117 total touchdowns.

“He’s so beneficial to all of our offensive skill players, our receivers and our quarterbacks, and so to have that kind of knowledge around is awesome,” Norvell said then. “He’s so bright and he’s such a great communicator, and as you can imagine, he’s an unbelievable competitor.”

It was again at the MWC media days in Las Vegas prior to the 2022 season that Norvell, 59, provided some valuable context on Chang, who was nearly 41.

Norvell told TheDNVR.com that when he found out about the UH opening in January, he pushed hard for Chang to get the job in a phone call with UH Athletic Director David Matlin.

He succeeded. Chang became his first understudy to gain an FBS head coaching job.

“I always felt he would have an opportunity, and I just wanted to do all I could to help him get to that point. I’m the No. 1 guy in the Timmy Chang fan club,” Norvell told KHON at the media days.

“He made such an impact on our teams at Nevada and I just know that’s going to translate really well as a head coach. I’m very fortunate that he got a chance to work with me and I got a chance to work with him.”

Chang said Norvell will forever be one of his three lifetime coaching mentors, along with his old UH coach June Jones, who gave him a graduate assistant gig at Southern Methodist as his first coaching opportunity, and Curt Newsome, Chang’s boss at Emory and Henry.

He said Norvell’s caring nature is his defining characteristic.

“Personally, I’m in a debt to that man for the rest of my life,” Chang said. “He took me from a D-III coordinator and put me on his staff. He allowed me to represent him and his family and the program. He taught me so many lessons. He had to go in, and with myself and a lot of the guys, rebuild a program, and in doing so he allowed me to learn and grow as a coach, a person and a family member. I owe everything to that guy.”

UH and CSU are alike in that they are in a full rebuild. Both programs’ only FBS win to date this season came over Nevada.

In his brief tenure in Fort Collins, Chang helped recruit several players to CSU, including several Nevada transfers like Tory Horton, who is the Rams’ best receiver by far with 491 yards and five of his team's nine total touchdowns.

Chang overlapped with CSU’s defensive coordinator, Freddie Banks, for a year in Reno, and offensive line coach Bill Best for two. He worked with the Rams’ associate head coach and quarterbacks coach Matt Mumme for his entire Nevada tenure.

Chang expects to share emotional reunions with them after the game, as was the case with former players he coached in UH’s breakthrough win over the Wolf Pack last weekend.

“When you spend as much time as you do with a guy and a staff and good people, it means something, right?” he said. “It’ll be special to just go and see them and compete against them.”

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.