Press Maravich. Pete Maravich.

Those names come to mind first. A father coaching a son in college as Dan Hawkins is now coaching his quarterback son, Cody, at Colorado.

Examples of success of this sort are rare, as with the Maraviches; the father became a worse coach and the son became a showboat. The team did not win.

That's basketball, but it might as well be tennis, home of the most notorious of coaching fathers, or golf, where the example of Tiger Woods is the lasting legacy of Earl Woods.

It can work, and it can get contentious beyond the normal dance fathers and sons do. We think of Todd Marinovich, built as the perfect quarterback by a diligent father and the ultimate disorder there.

Moises Alou played for father Felipe as manager and Ken Griffey Jr. and Sr. lined up next to each other in the same outfield.

But that's baseball, full of generational pairs, the most famous and current being the Bondses.

Football is different, and while there have been lots of examples of quarterback sons of coaches, none come to mind where the son was running the father's team. Certainly not as a redshirt freshman.

Off evidence of just a brief chat with the younger Hawkins, there is no mistaking that one is the result of the other, in appearance, in enthusiasm, in outlook, making it easy to imagine the active mind of the father put in motion by the skills of the son.

I asked Cody Hawkins, apologizing in advance for assuming the obvious, if he is the starting quarterback of the Buffs.

"No one is the starting quarterback right now," Hawkins said. "We (Nick Nelson and Bernard Jackson) are all working hard, and whoever gives this team the best chance to win will be the starting quarterback."

How tactful, how coach's son-like.

But, I pressed, you expect to be the starter?

"Absolutely," Hawkins said. "In my mind, I'm preparing like I'm the starter."

How ambitious, how appropriate.

If it is strange looking in, how strange it must be looking out. It will take a very delicate touch to be the dutiful son and the proud father when pride and duty have 50,000 voices reviewing the situation, when one's job is so closely tied to the performance of the other.

Young Hawkins has sorted out dad from coach.

"At the office, he is Coach Hawk. At home, he is Dad," Hawkins said.

Customarily, these conflicts are avoided. John Elway did not play for Jack Elway nor Jim Harbaugh for Jack Harbaugh. An oddity for Brian Griese was that telling the world how he was doing might be his father, announcer and Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Griese.

One assumes that had either Peyton or Eli Manning asked a school to hire Archie as coach, the package would have been wrapped immediately.

All of this imagines abilities and gifts yet to be seen. While both the Hawkinses are where they are for the same reason, to coach and to play at the top level of college football, the father won two games last season and the son has yet to take a varsity snap.

"Things are going great for me now," Cody said. "I have no questions or no regrets about any of it."

Two things seem to stretch credibility, the first that the father did not know the son was coming to his school. Cody had committed to Boise State before changing his mind at the last moment. Dan Hawkins learned of his child's choice by fax.

"My dad had no idea," Cody Hawkins said. "I never really talked to him about it."

OK. I suppose. But having ground through college choice agonies with two children of my own, I find it hard to believe that either would have shown up somewhere undiscussed.

And any head coach unaware of his incoming quarterback candidates is . . . how to say this? . . . an idiot.

The other odd thing is that young Hawkins swears the older Hawkins will not make the choice of quarterback.

"That will be coach (Mark) Helfrich," Cody said of the Buffs' offensive coordinator.

"No, it won't," I said.

"Yes, it will," insisted Cody.

This is how tricky this all gets. Would a coach who is a father really remove himself both ways? Or should he? Will a father who is a coach react too fast or too slowly to game situations?

"To my father," said Cody, "I'm just another guy."

Impossible, of course.

What CU needs is the son to be as good as his record (undefeated at all levels in football), better than his size (a bit smallish, but so was Koy Detmer) and so productive it removes any question of favoritism or overreaction.

Anything less, and there is just another layer of woe in Boulder.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2411

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