Purdue football coach Joe Tiller said he twice tried to talk his athletic director out of Saturday's contracted game with the University of Hawai'i and said he still sees it as a "value-less game" for the Boilermakers.

Tiller, whose 8-4 and Champs Bowl-bound team arrives today, bemoaned the 13-hour trip, a 13th regular-season game, the players' time away from their families on Thanksgiving, the humidity, the fact the school said it will lose money on the game and that this is the Warriors' best team.

Asked on a media conference call yesterday what the pluses of playing the game might be, Tiller said, "I'm still looking for 'em. If you know of any, let me know, will ya?"

Tiller said, "I don't know the motivation for it. The game, in my opinion, would have been more palatable if we had an 11-game season instead of a 12-game season. It would have been more palatable if we would have been like Notre Dame and had a bye in the fifth week of the season. It would have been more palatable if there was a big pay day at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. This may end up being a net-dollar loss, because I don't know if all the expenses are covered."

Athletic director Morgan Burke said there would be a $40,000 loss.

After Northwestern and Michigan State lost games to UH at Aloha Stadium in 2004, Tiller said their coaches, "talked about it to all the other coaches (in the Big Ten) and their advice to every coach in that room was, 'Do not go there and play.' Michigan State's game was unbelievable. They had two touchdowns called back. They would have won the game going away. And they needed that game to become bowl eligible."

Since then, the Big Ten has requested and gotten Pac-10 officials.

Tiller said Purdue's game with UH was originally contracted in 1994 and when he arrived at West Lafayette, Ind. in 1997, "I told Morgan Burke that we didn't want to play that game. And that was when we had an 11-game schedule. So, it got pushed back. I told him again, as late as last winter, that we shouldn't be playing this game. Of course, by then the 12th game had been added. He asked what we should do and I told him to call them (UH) up and tell them, 'We're not coming. We're just not coming. Go find another opponent.' "

Tiller said he would not be in favor of playing UH again, even on a home-and-home arrangement. "No. If I were a West Coast coach, I would. But not here. It wouldn't be fair to bring the University of Hawai'i team here (to West Lafayette, Ind.). It's a 9-1/2 hour flight. We're going to leave at 6 a.m. to bus to Chicago O'Hare for the flight. So, for about 13 hours, these guys are going to be traveling and we have a very tired football team right now. We practiced last night and it was like practicing in slow motion. But, because of the schedule, we really had no option."

Tiller said, "we're going to make some sacrifices to go play this game and we're going to play against a team that we won't see the likes of offensively maybe ever again."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.