The University of Hawai'i's latest self-imposed football scheduling deadline — like so many before it — came and went yesterday without a completed schedule being announced.

With the problem making deadlines, it is probably a good thing athletic director Herman Frazier didn't go into the news business.

Although, at this point, scheduling hasn't looked like his forte, either.

Not when he was asked on Oct. 28 if completing the schedule was going be a problem in view of the Warriors' emerging prominence, and the response was a self-assured: "a piece of cake." Not when he was quoted as saying back in November the deed would be done in two weeks. Or when he told the athletic department staffers, including head coach June Jones, last month he expected it to be done in February at the latest.

We're told it could now be next week by the time the next — and possibly not even last — piece falls into place. Promising this isn't.

Did somebody give up scheduling for Lent?

So, here we are coming up on the middle of March and the Warriors' 13-game schedule still has two pukas in it. Not inconsiderable, manini ones, either.

One happens to be the Sept. 1 season opener, the kickoff of a season of hope and expectation coming off an 11-3 season and No. 24 ranking. The other is either Oct. 20 or Nov. 3, both smack dab in the middle of the conference schedule.

Would you want a Division I-AA team in the opener when you have three road games and another I-AA team filling the month behind it? Would you be thrilled about playing a non-conference road game — a sixth away game as it would turn out — heading into the teeth of the Western Athletic Conference schedule: Fresno State, Nevada, and Boise State?

Hardly. Yet, either — or both — remain distinct possibilities. Clearly things have long since moved past what is ideal and have gone all the way to desperate. All the way, a Charleston, S.C., newspaper reported, to the point where UH was sending "out mass e-mails to programs all across America" and garnered I-AA Charleston Southern.

You hope against the odds that this is all leading, somewhere worthwhile, and real soon. Hopefully toward a semi-decent schedule. But we get deadlines that pass. We get assurances that things are falling into place, and little seems to come of them. In the absence of a schedule in hand, it looks a lot like a four-corners delay is being run.

It is a situation that would be maddening enough if the Warriors were coming off a 5-7 season. But this isn't any old season. This stacks up as the most eagerly awaited of years, with the Warriors returning Colt Brennan and a team worthy of showcasing like none before it.

All it lacks is the schedule with which to do it.

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