Sure the University of Hawai'i football team's resounding success is bringing major moolah to a needy athletic department.

And, yes, the Warriors' run as the only undefeated team in major college football has blessed the school and state with unimagined visibility and good cheer.

But, as we are seeing, there have been other collateral benefits, like the cover football's wonder season is providing for the rest of the athletic department.

Such has been both the warm glow and vast shadow of goodwill cast by the football team's inspiring run that many disappointments have been shoved to the periphery of thought and debate.

Where the men's basketball team's surprising first-round loss in the 44th Outrigger Hotels Rainbow Classic and resulting exile to today's 11 a.m. consolation bracket might have been the hot issue in any other year, it has taken a significant back seat to almost anything to do with Warrior football.

Recruiting, Sugar Bowl tickets, autograph signings, you name it, and all things football dominate headlines and conversations. Three weeks after UH secured its Bowl Championship Series berth, there are longer lines to be found for souvenir t-shirts than tickets to anything else.

A meager turnout of 3,583, almost unheard of for opening night of the Rainbow Classic, was, in itself, testament to how sports fans and their dollars are following football, whether it be to New Orleans or the shopping malls.

The Rainbow Wahine volleyball team is a prime example. Their stunning early-round exit in the NCAA Tournament against unranked Middle Tennessee would have been the enduring stuff of call-in shows and chat rooms had it not come amid the Warriors' rousing finish.

That the Wahine's end came on the day the Warriors rallied to beat Washington and finish the regular season 12-0 fortuitously rendered volleyball an afterthought on Dec. 2. It dialed way down the disappointment and put off questions about why the Wahine seem to be getting more distant from title opportunities.

Not that the favor hasn't been extended the other way. Previous success by basketball and volleyball has taken the heat off football and each other in the past. In the 0-12 football season of 1998 in particular, UH fans gladly took comfort where they could find it.

But never has one sport provided such an all-encompassing feel-good tale on the level that this football team has given us. Or given other sports more reason to appreciate it.

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

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