No matter how lopsided the score over the years, no matter how much it rained and no matter how many other University of Hawai'i football "fans" were already in their dry cars headed home, the real UH faithful stayed to the end of every game.

"There was plenty of good cause for us to leave early, but we didn't," said Gilbert Leong of Kailua, who has held season tickets for more than 30 years. "I told my grandsons, 'We're sitting through these games as penance to get to heaven.' "

There have been many winning seasons over the decades, but other years were tough to endure. So some die-hard, long-time UH fans call this unprecedented, undefeated season vindication for those miserable times and dismal crowds.

And UH's first trip to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans?

The team's first Bowl Championship Series appearance represents the reward for enduring beer, spit and other objectionable items that fell between the bleachers of Honolulu Stadium — the old "termite palace" — where in the early years, UH fans were scarce but losses could be counted on.

They don't resent the fair-weather fans that filled Aloha Stadium this year. And they don't mind the longer waits to enter the parking lot or the parking stalls full of tailgaters this year.

THE VONAPPEN ERA

They just wish every game had sold out this season and that more people will buy season tickets next year.

"If you really support the team, you've got to be a season-ticket holder," said Ron Seiple, 65, of Lanikai. "It really is insulting that a team like we had this year didn't fill up every game. If the people of Hawai'i want to continue this ride, they have to fill up the stadium."

Many of the hard-core fans look back over decades of UH football history and find a common benchmark of their commitment in the dismal tenure of head coach Fred vonAppen. In three years at Aloha Stadium, vonAppen's teams saw five wins against 31 losses.

The most loyal of the loyal UH fans point to their unwavering attendance during vonAppen's 19-game losing streak between October 1997 and September 1999 as the merit badge of their loyalty. In 1998, en route to a perfect record of 0-12 under vonAppen, UH averaged 23,667 fans per game.

This year, Aloha Stadium averaged 41,325 fans and sold out — all 50,000 seats — the final two games of the season.

Seiple and his nephew, R.B. Seiple, have been through all those years. They would never turn their backs on a UH football team.

But during the low point of the vonAppen era, they did put paper bags over their heads as they sat in orange section HH, on the 25-yard line behind the UH bench.

"We'd never leave early and, even in those years when they weren't doing well, we'd sit there and support the team," Ron Seiple said. "We just didn't want to be identified."

They tried to have fun hiding their embarrassment beneath grocery bags — R.B. said the idea was "probably born out of a beer-induced stupor. It's really hard to drink through that thing so we'd have to take them off or else we'd spill beer on ourselves."

But to this day, Ron said, the sentiment was never aimed at the players.

"We went to every game in that 0 and 12 year," he said. "We're not fair-weather fans and we would never knock the team. But we were pretty upset with the coaching. ... It's easy to support a team that's 12 and 0. It's hard to support a team that's 0 and 12."

There was little worry of being heckled or jeered by nearby UH fans for their anonymous act of displeasure.

"There weren't a lot of people around us," R.B. Seiple said. "The stands were pretty empty."

There were even smaller crowds at Honolulu Stadium, which held 22,000 to 24,000 people. When it was full.

Gilbert Leong and his wife, Sylvia, both graduated from UH in 1950 and became that rarest of species — loyal UH football fans.

"The old stadium held like 20,000 people and it would be one-quarter full," Masuda said. "There was more losing than winning, and the better teams would just kill us. It would rain a lot, and the stadium was really old. It was barely tolerable. The high school games got way more people."

SPIRIT REMAINED

Among the dwindling faithful fans, however, there was always spirit.

Leong remembers pep rallies on campus the night before a game under coach Tom Kaulukukui. The band and a cheering section always turned out for game days.

In the age before the Internet, Leong would call home on business trips to the Mainland to find out how UH did "because there was no way that a UH game would be in a Mainland newspaper. Forget it. You never saw anything about a Hawai'i game in the sports pages."

Rain or shine, Masuda also remembers women like his wife, Sylvia, walking beneath the bleachers with umbrellas over their heads.

"I didn't want stuff spilling my head," she said.

Gilbert added, "Anybody who went to the old stadium knows that who-knew-what would come falling down."

In 1960 and 1961, Ray Masuda played in the old termite palace as a 5-foot-10, 255-pound center for UH coach Hank Vasconcellos.

"Our facilities didn't compare to even a mediocre program," Masuda said. "It was understood we wouldn't be able to compete with Iowa, Kentucky, Arizona. It didn't matter. We were there to represent the university."

After he graduated from UH in 1961, on his way to a career as a senior vice president at Bank of Hawaii, Masuda would sit in the rain at Honolulu Stadium and watch the teams lose in the mud-soaked field, which served double duty for football and baseball.

"It did get a little discouraging to lose game after game," he said. "But I'm a fan of the team. You take what you get and you just move on."

When Aloha Stadium opened in 1976, Masuda saw both the bad years and this perfect season from his seats in yellow section MM. And he could only imagine the feeling of having a sold-out Aloha Stadium crowd screaming and yelling the team to another win.

Asked if he envied the support that Masuda's UH team never got, Masuda said only, "Those days have passed. Those days have passed."

Now, at the age of 68, Masuda is ecstatic that the losing years and dismal crowds also have passed.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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