By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

The University of Hawai'i football team will be hopping on a charter flight out of Louisiana after Saturday's game and it is probably a good thing, too.

"If it was a regular commercial flight, I don't know if we'd make it to the plane (in time)," said coach June Jones, only slightly kidding.

Once the Warriors step into Joe Aillet Stadium on the Louisiana Tech campus, they figure to be there for a while.

Which might be why UH isn't leaving anything to chance with its charter scheduled to depart seven hours after the 9 a.m. (Hawai'i time) kickoff.

For when it comes to two of the pass-happiest teams in college football, you never know how long of a day you might be in for. As aerial circuses go, this could be a three-ring job for two teams that already average 101 passes a game between them and have the potential to challenge the NCAA record of 135 combined passes (Houston vs. Texas Christian, 1990).

"I know they are gonna throw it a bunch ... and so are we," Jones promised. "It could take a while."

Not that his Bulldog counterpart, Jack Bicknell Jr., is a fan of the infantry approach, either, having played on the same Boston College teams with Doug Flutie. Consider that Tech threw 56 times in a four-hour, 43-37 loss to Boise State two weeks ago that produced 969 yards of combined passing.

If UH and Brigham Young put the ball in the air 117 times in their memorable 4-hour, 24-minute dogfight in 2001, you wonder what these two teams might be capable of.

The last time their teams met, a 2000 date at Aloha Stadium, the ball was in the air 98 times. Quarterbacks Tim Chang and Luke McCown were mere freshmen at the time.

With McCown a senior, and UH's Chang a redshirt junior, the result of having received a medical redshirt in 2001, this shapes up as a real shootout. With both teams forced to play catch-up in the Western Athletic Conference standings, the possibilities are considerable, especially if they match each other touchdown-for-touchdown in a score-a-thon.

Never mind that UH is a one-point betting favorite, the most interesting wagers on this game might be the over/under on passes and game time.

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