By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

It is weeks like this one when college football coaches really earn their dazzling six- and seven-figure salaries.

Now, any coach worth his courtesy car or country club privilege should be able to get his team up to play the No. 1 team in the Associated Press or USA Today Top 25 without breaking a sweat.

But what if you're June Jones and your University of Hawai'i team is playing Tulsa, the team that has for the past month bottomed out the Bottom Ten?

Powerful Miami or Oklahoma practically sell themselves as opponents that teams want to prepare for and fans can't wait to see. But what of Tulsa (0-6) and the nation's longest active losing streak, 16 games, it brings to Aloha Stadium this week?

Talking up a team you see on television and magazine covers is one thing. Puffing up one that hasn't beaten anybody since its 2001 opener against a I-AA team and is in the bottom 10 of seven major NCAA statistical categories is a whole other ballgame. Undoubtedly not an easy one when they have been outscored 243-110.

That's something the coaches manual doesn't cover and a subject they don't have seminars on at coaching conventions.

When ESPN.com's weekly Bottom Ten is released today, the betting is Tulsa will occupy the No. 1 spot for a fifth consecutive week, an event that is unlikely to prompt jubilant shouts of "We're No. 1!" or inspire the excited waving of foam fingers in Oklahoma or Manoa.

For the niche that the Golden Hurricane has occupied among 117 Division I-A schools is not an enviable one. Certainly not for embattled and overwhelmed Tulsa, which has had to defend its dedication to staying I-A in the face of 10 years without a winning season, nor for the team that draws it as an opponent.

Playing the Golden Hurricane is, in some ways, anything but a 24-karat assignment for the team that draws it each week.

Since Tulsa is invariably a double-digit-plus underdog and likely on its way to tying the NCAA record for single-season 0-12 futility, the pressure is on to beat Tulsa and do it convincingly or risk inviting hard questions and doubts. And, heaven help the team that actually loses to the Golden Hurricane and ends the streak some distant day.

Now, Jones can talk up a chicken feathers opponent to the level of gourmet chicken salad with the best of them. Witness the concern he conveyed about Texas-El Paso (1-5) and Southern Methodist (0-7).

But what is there to say about Tulsa, a team UH has had little trouble with even in better times on the road? Without totally stretching the bounds of the truth, that is.

They could say Tulsa comes in here hungry and has nothing to lose; that the Warriors are taking them one at a time and can't afford to look past anybody. But those cliches are more worn than the Aloha Stadium AstroTurf.