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By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
Not to say that Rice University football coach Ken Hatfield is Jurassic-ancient or anything, but ...
In Hatfield's first season (1980) coaching in the Western Athletic Conference, Jim McMahon was playing quarterback at Brigham Young and Jesse Sapolu was on the University of Hawai'i's offensive line.
In Hatfield's WAC tenure, he's coached against three UH coaches, Dick Tomey, Fred vonAppen and June Jones, on the opposite sideline.
So, pardon the 61-year-old Hatfield and the Owls if this season, Rice's last in the WAC, takes on the unmistakable mission of completing some long overdue, unfinished business.
In the 43-year history of the WAC, Hatfield is the only head football coach with a decade or more of service and without at least a share of a conference title to show for it.
The conference season that opens with UH at Rice Stadium Saturday (2 p.m. Hawai'i time) will be the 13th overall for Hatfield and, most likely, his last in the WAC since the Owls join Conference USA July 1, 2005.
"I don't think there is any doubt about it, we would like to win the WAC this year," Hatfield said yesterday, feeling it would be a fitting sendoff to C-USA.
Only three coaches, LaVell Edwards (BYU), Frank Kush (Arizona State) and Fisher DeBerry (Air Force) have won more conference games than Hatfield's 47 in his combined WAC tenure at the Air Force Academy (1980-83) and Rice (1996-03), sandwiched around stays at Arkansas and Clemson.
Hatfield is the fifth-winningest active coach (164-122-4) and has won titles in the Atlantic Coast Conference (Clemson) and Southwest Conference (Arkansas and Rice) with his spread option offense. But, so far, he is 0-for-the-WAC.
Hatfield has come close, sometimes agonizingly so, to a WAC title but never gotten the trophy. In 1983, his 10-2 Falcons lost out to BYU (11-1) and Steve Young. In 1996, the first year of the 16-team, two-division WAC, Rice finished second behind BYU in the Mountain Division.
It isn't just the near-misses that have the Owls thinking they can contend for a title this year as dark horses. It is also hope that springs from having 18 seniors and 16 starters back from a team that has won five of its last six games (four in 2003 and this year's opener).
It is also a favorable schedule — UH and Fresno State go to Houston and Rice doesn't play Boise State — that has the Owls believing they can contend.
"We're looking forward to that first game in the WAC (season) and then looking toward the whole eight-game season, too," Hatfield said.
For Hatfield and the Owls, the mission is to make their finishing kick their best one.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
