Anybody even know what a catbird seat is?

Beats me.

If it's a comfortable leather lounger from which he can smugly look back at the broken promises made to him by certain administrators at BYU about becoming LaVell Edwards' successor as the school's head football coach, and have the last laugh, then, that's where he currently dwells.

Thing is, he's not laughing.

Pitying may be the more accurate verb.

"What's happening [at BYU] is really sad," he says. "Especially the attitude there."

While the Cougars are suffering through what for them is a horrible football drought, including two consecutive losing seasons, and large helpings of off-the-field issues, Chow, the acclaimed offensive coordinator at USC, a triumphant former son of BYU, who has never suffered a losing season in three decades of coaching, steers the offense of the No. 1-ranked team in college football.

The same team that rolls into Provo on Saturday night.

The game marks the first time Chow has returned in a coaching capacity to the school where he played a huge roll in running BYU's offenses for 27 years, to a place where he has owned a home - it's for sale, if anyone's interested - since the early '70s.

A raging river of water has flowed under the bridge, and over it, too, since Chow left BYU under duress after the 1999 season, having been stiffed by powers at the school who were already looking for Edwards' replacement in the form of Gary Crowton, an assistant with the Chicago Bears, instead of Edwards' longtime assistant.

Just one year before Edwards retired, Chow did what he otherwise never would have done. He left the shadow of the Wasatch to take over the offense at North Carolina State for a season, where he sharpened the skills of a young, inexperienced quarterback named Philip Rivers.

"We weren't forced out of [Provo]," says Chow, who receives a regular stipend check from BYU for all those years of employment, a meager financial buttress alongside the hundreds of thousands he makes from USC as the nation's highest-paid assistant coach. "It was obvious it was time to move on. We had stayed too long."

Staying long, on the other hand, was part of Chow's plan. He wanted to dodge the nomadic lifestyle coaching typically requires, mostly on account of his family. His late father, Warren Chow, had been a top customs official in Hawaii, but he never ascended to the lead position, in part, because he refused to move his family to the scattered locations the government requested. In that way, the son mirrored his father.

Chow had walked away from offers at other programs, preferring to remain LaVell's lieutenant. He kept his eye on the Cougars' head coaching job, knowing time was on his side. Edwards was nearing the end.

Not that replacing the man who's name was sure to be riveted onto the side of the stadium would be all Skittles and Milk Duds.

"It would be like Gene Bartow following John Wooden at UCLA," Chow once told me. "But if I saw a chance to take a head coaching position, sure, I'd take it. I hope my name comes up with the BYU job because it would be a chance to be a head coach. That's the next step. I'd like to do it, but I don't sit around aspiring to that."

Sources say Chow was promised the job by higher-ups at the school, but that promise was conveniently forgotten or rendered irrelevant near the conclusion of Edwards' tenure.

He doesn't say it now, but Chow was miffed.

And royally ticked.

At BYU, he had played a significant role in tutoring almost all of the great quarterbacks. He became a co-offensive coordinator in '82, and continued in that position, moving to assistant head coach in 1990.

Still, Chow's time in Provo was laced, at times, with venom. Fans and media members sometimes criticized his decisions. Despite the constant winning, in less successful seasons, Chow heard the boos and shouldered the blame during call-in shows.

"It's tough to deal with," he said after a 6-5 season in 1997. "You hear it. I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt. You feel it. You're human. It's not an easy thing . . . During the Utah game [a BYU loss at home], I remember standing on the sideline thinking, 'This is a lousy football game, with two lousy teams playing it.' It was an awful feeling."

Not as awful as getting the bad vibes about his future at BYU after the '99 season. Along with the good times, those 27 years, apparently, had bubbled up a bit of poison spewing in both directions.

As a result, he bolted for NC State for a season, then jumped to USC in 2000 as the storied program's offensive coordinator.

What he has done since in L.A. is almost ridiculous.

With head coach Pete Carroll concentrating on the defense, Chow is left, much the way he was under Edwards, to run the offense as he sees fit. He developed quarterback Carson Palmer into a Heisman Trophy winner, much the way he did Ty Detmer at BYU. Current USC quarterback Matt Leinart may also be on his way to the trophy. Chow got a national championship last season, much the way he did at BYU in 1984.

And, under the bright lights that perennially shine on the No. 1-ranked Trojans, he's been elevated to a lofty perch as one of college football's greatest offensive minds.

While BYU, under Crowton, has cratered out.

From that perch, Chow could chuckle. Maybe, privately, he has.

Publicly, he's mostly quiet about his old school's fortunes, or lack thereof.

"It's been such a long time," he says. "A lot of years have gone by."

Saturday night's match-up in Provo is reduced by him to "just another game."

But Chow is fully aware of - and surprised about, he says - the Cougars' struggles. He is, however, in no place or state of mind to even think about eventually helping out, if BYU extended an invitation for him to become a replacement for the beleaguered Crowton.

"We've moved on," he says. "Undoubtedly not . . . There are different things on the horizon. We've been there, done that."

Ouch. How's that feel, BYU?

"I choose to remember the good things," he says, without necessarily implying that, in the Cougars' current state of decline, good things are only in the past.

Their resuscitation, though, is their business.

Chow's got his own.

"I'd like a shot at [a head coaching job]," he says. "I want to go somewhere I can be successful. I've never experienced a losing season in my career. I don't want to start now."