By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

A 12-0 University of Hawai'i football team in a New Year's Day bowl game? Perhaps even a Cotton Bowl or Holiday Bowl berth for the Warriors at 11-1?

There is still the matter of winning 11 or 12 regular-season games first, you understand, but if the Warriors do go on a tear, they could have a Bowl Championship Series invitation to show for it someday.

What has long been deemed impossible under the current power structure would become merely difficult if newly proposed changes to the BCS, including adding a fifth bowl for 2006, are approved.

For schools such as UH, Boise State, Brigham Young, Fresno State and Texas Christian that haven't been part of the six conference cabal that effectively controls college football, that would be a significant and long overdue change.

"What I think it does for, say, Hawai'i or Tulane is you could honestly now say to your student athletes, 'Hey, guys, if you have a terrific season, there is now a real shot we can go play in one of those (BCS) games,' " said Scott Cowan, Tulane president and leader of the Coalition for Athletics Reform.

"And, you couldn't say that before."

Not at Tulane of Conference USA, which went 11-0 in 1998. Not at Marshall of the Mid-American Conference, which was 12-0 in 1999; or TCU, which was 10-1 in the Western Athletic Conference in 2000; or Miami of Ohio of the MAC, which went 12-1 last season.

But the four BCS games (Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar bowls) have so far been the exclusive province of the six-member conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern).

Now, if the plan that could add a fifth BCS bowl had been in place when the BCS was born in 1998, Cowan said teams from non-BCS conferences would have appeared in four of the past six years and shared in the big bucks that comes with them.

Strength of schedule and position in the polls would still help determine the BCS ranking used to select teams, and champions of the six BCS conferences would continue to be guaranteed berths. But with the number of at-large positions doubled to four, the reasonable access the WAC and others have long pushed for would become more of a reality.

"The changes that have been talked about are very significant," said Karl Benson, WAC commissioner. "They would practically guarantee an unbeaten (WAC) champion a berth."

UH President Evan Dobelle said, "I personally think that if we win all 12 games (in 2006) that we could go to a BCS game."

With that to look forward to, all UH has to do now is run the table.

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