Neither one will take back seat

This isn’t the story you expect to hear.

Lane Kiffin recalls his time working beside Norm Chow on the USC coaching staff and talks about carpooling from Redondo Beach, the two of them cruising along freeways.

“We talked football,” he says. “And we listened to a lot of Hawaiian music.”

Chow offers a similarly pleasant memory of the years he spent as offensive coordinator with Kiffin as the young assistant beside him, the Trojans rolling from one winning season to another.

“We had some good times together,” Chow said. “And we had a lot of success.”

It sounds like a match made in football heaven -- so why are some observers making such a big deal about their reunion today? Asking about hurt feelings? Calling it a grudge match?

This afternoon at LP Field in Nashville, the 32-year-old Kiffin will walk the Raiders sideline as the youngest head coach in the NFL. The 61-year-old Chow will be in the booth upstairs as offensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans. Almost three years since they coached together at USC, neither man can escape lingering questions about their shared past.

Fans were stunned when Chow abruptly left USC after the 2004 national championship season. Though the Titans job held at least one obvious attraction -- the team boosted his salary to almost $1 million -- his departure revived speculation about a rift with Pete Carroll.

Kiffin was part of that dynamic.

The younger coach was an ambitious up-and-comer and the son of Carroll’s mentor, longtime NFL defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin. Chow was expected to leave USC sooner or later -- he had interviewed for the top job at Stanford weeks earlier -- and Kiffin was next in line. At the very least, Carroll had already given him the title of “passing game coordinator” and was considering added responsibilities on offense.

Some colleagues privately bristled at the assistant’s quick rise. The staff comprised a blend of personalities that divided along age lines.

“The age thing was a big difference,” Kiffin said. “But people are always different. It was good having Norm there because he was so calm. I think that was valuable for Pete and our whole staff.”

The Raiders coach recalls sitting in the booth beside Chow during the 2005 Orange Bowl victory over Oklahoma, a night on which the Trojans offense steamrollered for 55 points. He took mental notes of Chow’s play-calling, his “attack mentality.”

“To be next to him in the press box . . . it was a great experience that I lucked into, really,” Kiffin said.

The ever-modest Chow grumbles when told of this comment, refusing to take credit for Kiffin’s education.

“He was a bright guy when he got [to USC],” Chow said. “He didn’t get bright because we worked together.”

As for any disputes between the two -- including a reported shouting match on the practice field before the Orange Bowl -- Chow now dismisses them as standard football disagreements over “whether to run a play left or right.” Asked about those years, Carroll describes a group of assistants who constantly challenged each other to improve, “the battle and tug-of-wars and chess game.”

“I think they worked beautifully together,” he said of Chow and Kiffin. “Look what we did.”

In the four seasons before Chow’s departure, the Trojans improved from 6-6 to 13-0, winning one national title and sharing another.

After that, Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian came under scrutiny as the new minders of the offense. Even as USC swept through an undefeated regular season in 2005 -- ultimately losing to Texas in the national championship game at the Rose Bowl -- critics accused the pair of abandoning principles by which Chow had helped make the Trojans successful, and doing so for the sake of putting their stamp on the game plan.

But when the Raiders went looking for a head coach last off-season, they came directly to USC. Sarkisian reportedly declined to take the job and it went to Kiffin.

The football world expected Chow to be the first former USC assistant to grab a head coaching spot. Long considered a top mind in the college game, he had been linked to several openings over the years, turning down a few and missing out with Stanford and the Arizona Cardinals.

When the Raiders hired Kiffin, Chow recalls being “surprised that a young guy would get a job like that. A lot of people were surprised.”

So far, Kiffin has received high marks for energizing a moribund franchise. Though the Raiders are 2-4, they have been competitive, holding fourth-quarter leads in four of those games. The offense, in particular, has shown dramatic improvement, averaging about 70 yards and 10 points more than last season despite an unsettled situation at quarterback.

Dealing with personnel has been the biggest difference between the professional and college ranks, Kiffin said, the constant flow of releasing players and adding free agents.

“I think Kiff’s doing a fantastic job under the circumstances of where they’ve come from,” Carroll said, adding: “They just need to turn that final corner.”

In Tennessee, Chow claims he has never been happier. He likes working for Coach Jeff Fisher and mentions his new home state has no income tax.

“Oh man,” he said, “that’s a good thing.”

When he arrived in February 2005, Chow looked at the schedule and asked an assistant, Where are the soft teams? To which his colleague replied, “We’re the soft team.”

The new guy quickly learned that pro football moves fast. A coordinator cannot afford to call a play in the second quarter simply to set up something later in the game. And if a play works early, chances are the defense will adjust and stop it next time.

“In college, you expect to make a ton of first downs,” he said. “Here, you make a first down and you want to jump out of the booth.”

But the Titans are on the rebound, starting 4-2 this season with Chow crafting a solid ground game to complement the team’s sixth-ranked defense. “He’s doing pretty good,” Carroll said.

The coordinator has been careful to slowly develop second-year quarterback Vince Young. That would be the same Vince Young who led Texas past USC the season after Chow left.

“He just has the ‘it’ factor that you look for in quarterbacks,” Chow said. “Now, he has a long way to go, but he’s a guy who everybody on the team admires and gravitates to.”

After missing last week’s victory over Houston because of a sore quadriceps, Young is expected to return against Oakland. It is an important development in a game that means a lot to both teams, the Titans eager to sustain momentum and the Raiders needing a victory to keep pace in their division.

Yet football is only part of the story, the Kiffin-Chow matchup a persistent element in media banter since summertime NFL previews. This week, reporters have asked them about it and columnists have weighed in from various parts of the country.

“We’re playing the Raiders,” Chow said. “We’re not playing Lane Kiffin.”

Three years since they parted ways, it seems the coaches would prefer to talk about anything other than their supposed personal rivalry.

Lineups. Game plans. Even carpool lanes.

Times staff writer Gary Klein contributed to this report.

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david.wharton@latimes.com