HONOLULU — Hawaii football had the family connection and the appealing style of play. It still took one person to bring it all together for John Estes, then a senior center at Saint Mary’s High in Stockton, Calif.
During his official recruiting visit to Aloha Stadium in December 2004, Estes watched Timmy Chang throw four touchdowns to Chad Owens and for more than 400 yards in a 41-38 Warriors win over Michigan State.
“The Warriors threw the ball over the yard, and Timmy Chang was on point, and they won that game. That really allowed me to fall in love with UH,” Estes recalled in a phone interview this week. “because of guys like him, Timmy Chang, and the rest of the boys, that’s why I came to UH, ultimately.”
Estes, who would go on to set an NCAA record for consecutive games started at 54, including the entire Sugar Bowl season of 2007, and played in the NFL, is one of four San Jose State (2-5, 1-2 Mountain West) coaches with Hawaii ties who will go up against the Rainbow Warriors (6-2, 3-1) in a key Mountain West rivalry game at CEFCU Stadium at 4:30 p.m. Hawaii time in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday.
“It’s almost gonna feel like brother versus brother, honestly,” Estes said.
Second-year head coach Ken Niumatalolo is a former UH quarterback and graduate assistant who is 1-2 against UH from his time at Navy. But Spartans offensive coordinator Craig Stutzmann, offensive line coach Estes and receivers coach Billy Ray Stutzmann, plus offensive analyst Kolney Cassel was an offensive graduate assistant at UH.
Chang impacted and was impacted by their time with the program.
While Chang was instrumental in Estes’ stellar UH career coming to pass — Estes succeeded current UH offensive line coach Derek Faavi as the starting center in 2006 — Craig Stutzmann was equally as vital in Chang’s journey.
Stutzmann, two years Chang’s senior coming out of Saint Louis School, and fellow former Crusaders helped the young gunslinger get acclimated to Manoa college life when he arrived in 2000 as a touted local recruit for June Jones fresh off shattering the Hawaii high school passing yardage and touchdown records. Immediately, Chang was thrust into a position battle with a more experienced junior college signal-caller, Nick Rolovich.
About 16 years later, when it came time for Chang to cut his teeth as a college coach, Stutzmann encouraged him to visit his office at Emory & Henry in Virginia. Stutzmann had just been hired to Rolovich’s UH staff and his offensive coordinator job at the Division III school was opening up.
“It was a blessing for me, and I enjoyed every moment of it,” Chang said this week. “All the way to living in his house, taking his office and running his playbook was a part of that season that I really enjoyed … and me and my wife (Sherry) got married [at] Emery & Henry at the school’s chapel. So a lot of fond memories … just really blessed to have a brother like Craig.”
Chang parlayed the Emory & Henry job into his first FBS position coach job at Nevada.
Stutzmann has since honed his “Spread and Shred” offense with many of the same concepts of the run-and-shoot attack he ran in his high school and college days. Chang has steadily modernized the run-and-shoot to incorporate tight ends and a more robust running game.
SJSU is No. 1 among Mountain West teams in passing offense this year at 313.4 yards per game. Hawaii is No. 2 at 295.9.
Chang said of the formative impacts of his time at Emory & Henry: “Really important. I think one of the staples of what makes San Jose State really good is their RPO game. And that’s something that I was blessed to learn and in Craig’s offense at Emory & Henry; just really diving into the true essence of run-pass option.
“He had a foresight of his offense, Spread and Shred, and kind of where we are with the run and shoot, of having the different piece of being able to run the ball right. I think that’s the kind of the change in the cat-and-mouse game of trying to defend the pass as well as trying to defend the run, and it’s just another dynamic. He’s a great football mind, and he does a great job with his brother, Billy Ray.”
Chang and Stutzmann have kept in regular contact through their journeys — just not so much this week as they prepare to go head to head.
But Stutzmann was happy to talk about his friend to Spectrum News. To a question about Chang’s development into a record-breaking college quarterback, Stutzmann paused to consider something. Until that moment, he’d never realized the parallel between Chang’s journey as a player and his development as a head coach.
UH is bowl eligible under Chang for the first time in his fourth season and has designs on a Mountain West championship game berth after three years of struggles.
“Timmy had come in with a lot of accolades, with a lot of big expectations, right?” Stutzmann said. “It was a big deal to have Timmy to stay home and play for the University of Hawaii.”
UH went 3-9 in his true freshman season of 2000 and Rolovich took over down the stretch in 2001, but UH posted winning years primarily with Chang at the controls from 2002 to 2004, including the huge win over Michigan State to get the Warriors to the 2004 Hawaii Bowl.
“The first few years, there’s tons of expectations for him, but as you can see in the fourth year, he’s starting to feel a little bit more comfortable in what he’s doing and what they’re doing,” Stutzmann said, “And so I think there’s a lot of similarities for him as a player and him as a coach.”
Including, he added, Chang’s “jovial” personality that has endured the inherent pressures of heading up an FBS program.
“He’s always smiling. He’s a little bit of a jokester. You love being around him, because he does a great job of making you feel really good, right? He has that quality.”
Niumatalolo, the veteran coach from Oahu’s North Shore and Radford High, has kept close tabs on his old program. He didn’t get to interact with Chang when he took his Spartans to the Hawaii Bowl last December, but their families are intertwined, too.
He watches UH football whenever he gets a chance, he said.
“Timmy’s a good person. Comes from a good family,” Niumatalolo said during his Monday game week media availability. “His dad was my JV basketball coach, Levi Chang. A great man. Another guy who had a profound impact on me … (I was) probably a hothead a little bit. But Coach Chang, he was a great mentor.
“Timmy, we’re obviously different in age group, but … he had a phenomenal career. He’s a way, way better quarterback than I was.”
One more well-known tie: The teams will play for the Dick Tomey Legacy Trophy, named for the late head coach who guided both programs.
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.