Take your pick: UH looks good in print
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
When it comes to preseason predictions by college football magazines, title talk this time of the year is invariably cheap — $4.95 to $7.95 for the publication of your choice.
But if you are the University of Hawai'i, this season there is finally a lot to talk — and read — about.
Three perennial magazines — GamePlan, Lindy's and Phil Steele's College Football Preview — say they have chosen UH to win the Western Athletic Conference. Reportedly, a fourth, Street & Smith, has also picked UH first, according to people who have seen its 2003 edition.
While such things are taken for granted in Columbus, Ohio, or with a yawn in Norman, Okla., they assume added significance here, where it might be the first time any national magazine, let alone a handful of them, have chosen UH to win the WAC.
A survey by Chris Stassen of 12 major magazines between 1993 and 2002 shows UH picked no higher than second and then only very rarely. As recently as four years ago the Warriors were consensus cellar dwellers in back-to-back seasons.
Never mind that the UH has shared two WAC titles (1992 and '99), even in their best years the Warriors have never been considered more than "contenders" on the preseason magazine racks. In 1992, the season of their only top-20 finish in the polls, the Warriors were picked from sixth to ninth.
But the word is apparently getting out on the Warriors, no small feat for a team time zones and thousands of miles removed from the heartbeat of college football.
Coming off back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in 12 years and some strong showings in their televised appearances haven't hurt. People are taking notice. The numbers they have put up on the scoreboard as the No. 2 passing and total offense team in the country last season, and the quality of the returnees they welcome back have given them entree to a place in the pages before the deepest of off-shore gambling and dot.com ads.
Throw in a schedule that has the two most formidable WAC contenders — Fresno State and Boise State — both coming to Aloha Stadium, and the Warriors are stepping into uncharted territory even before they first tee it up on their new FieldTurf.
Indeed, Joe Del Popolo, who has been writing GamePlan College Football since 1970, said this is the highest he has picked UH. With all UH potentially has going for it, Del Popolo said he is including the Warriors among his "sleeper" Top 25 teams.
And, Phil Steele's College Football rates the Warriors No. 26 nationally, suggesting that the days of taking UH cheap anytime of the year might be over.
