Posted on: Friday, October 10, 2003

Hawai'i Bowl could use some early kokua

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

For 21 years now, first as a University of Hawai'i player, then a graduate assistant coach, employee and administrator, Jim Donovan has rooted loud and hard for the Warrior football team.

But maybe not as loud or as hard as this week.

These days Donovan is executive director of the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl and, as such, tomorrow's UH-Fresno State showdown is close to both his heart and his wallet.

With a win, the struggling 2-3 Warriors take a significant step closer to the seven- victory minimum needed to become bowl-eligible and clinch a berth in the made-for-home Christmas Day game. A loss, however, is to stumble backward with the postseason becoming more problematic for the Warriors, who would have to win five of seven remaining games, three of them on the road.

And, let's face it, a Hawai'i Bowl without Hawai'i in it would be the equivalent of Christmas without Santa Claus for the year-old bowl game.

It can be difficult enough to pry people away from their trees and presents on Dec. 25 even with the home team on the marquee. With, say, Boise State standing in against Memphis, "crowd" would be a relative term.

Only slightly better would be a UH team that limped in, qualifying in December, the last week of the regular season, when many prospective ticket buyers had already begun spending their holiday dollars elsewhere.

For the Warriors' own bank account — and those whose bottom lines are also tethered to UH's success — tomorrow's game looms as an important crossroads in this curious season.

And few grasp the import of it better than the Hawai'i Bowl, which enters the second year of its four-year contract looking to build on last year's successful debut.

Indeed, the Hawai'i Bowl, a partnership of UH, ESPN Regional Television (ERT) and the Western Athletic Conference, was conceived so that what happened in 2001, when the Warriors were left out, bowl-less after a 9-3 finish, would not occur again. It was to fill the void left by the departure and demise of the Aloha and O'ahu bowls.

The idea was that UH would have a postseason home, ERT would gain a Christmas Day event, the WAC would have one more showcase and the state would have a tourism lure in December. A neat Christmas package all the way around.

That supposed, as they outlined at the initial press conference, UH would be bowl-eligible for the first several years until the game built up its following and became something of a holiday tradition that could stand on its own once in a while.

In the meantime, Donovan says, "my knees are getting sore ... from all the praying I've been doing this week."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.