If you are in the East, you might catch the ending by setting your alarm for 3 a.m.

This is the essence of the University of Hawai'i's problem. It has a very good football team — unbeaten as a matter of fact. But few know about it and even fewer care. Some schools have special teams problems. Others have depth problems.

Hawai'i has a geographical problem.

When it takes its 11-0 record and No. 12 Bowl Championship Series standing against Washington, the game will begin at 6:30 p.m. Honolulu time. That's 8:30 in Los Angeles and 11:30 on the Eastern seaboard and New York City's Big Apple, where all major decisions in this sport and others get chewed on.

ESPN2 will carry the game. Few will watch. Bedtime is bedtime.

What a shame.

What is at stake is huge. It is also a nuance.

The BCS needs Hawai'i in one of its five major bowl games. It needs it so it can market the memory of last year's Boise State moment.

You remember. Everybody remembers.

Boise State was the little team that could, the unbeatens from the always-ignored Western Athletic Conference, who actually got into overtime in the Fiesta Bowl against traditional football factory Oklahoma and actually ended up beating the Sooners.

Chances are, you remember how.

Ian Johnson took a Statue of Liberty-like handoff and skirted left end for the winning points as all those blue-chip, soon-to-be-NFL-millionaire Sooners defenders tried to retrieve their jock straps. Then Johnson, the best thing to come out of San Dimas, Calif., since "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," kept right on running toward the sideline, where he proposed marriage to his girlfriend, cheerleader Chrissy Popadics.

Television was there because television is everywhere. America loved it. Florida won the national title a week later, but people were still buzzing about Ian and Chrissy. And only part of that buzz was their story.

The rest was a national "well done" for the little guy, Boise State. The 98-pound weakling had stomped the guy kicking sand in his face. This whole BCS deal, which was designed by football factories to further enhance the well-being of football factories, has struggled from the start to find politically acceptable ways to keep it a members-only club.

So, when all the computers and football-factory-brainwashed voters and all the tweaks to the computers were unable to exclude Boise State, the team from Idaho made the most of it.

And guess what? It was the best thing that ever happened to the BCS. It was suddenly more than the same 10 teams changing places near the top of the rankings every year and the same millionaire coaches being fawned over by the press and TV talking heads as they droned on about establishing the running game first.

Boise State ran a flea-flicker! Then a Statue of Liberty! In overtime! This was great fun.

So the BCS, even though it may not know it, needs another Boise State, another outsider with a chance to be wild and crazy and fun and maybe upset the apple cart again. Hawai'i is the team.

It has a quarterback named Colt Brennan who couldn't be more aptly named. His arm is a gun, and he used it this season to establish an NCAA career touchdown passing record with 126, with probably more to come against Washington.

Last Friday night, Brennan took Hawai'i to the outright WAC title by passing 53 times, completing 40 for 495 yards and five touchdowns. He also ran for a touchdown . The team Hawai'i beat was once-beaten Boise State, beaten, incidentally, by Washington. The player most effusive in his praise for what Hawai'i had done was Ian Johnson, still one of the best running backs in the country.

Hawai'i has a coach named June Jones, a veteran of nine years in the program, who has more creative things on his mind than establishing the running game. He knows Brennan has a gun, so he keeps sending bullets into the huddle.

Jones also should get points for his handling of the aftermath of a concussion suffered by Brennan against Fresno State. Brennan wanted to play the next game against Nevada two weeks ago, and that's understandable. He was then — and remains today if any mainland voters ever watch him — a top Heisman Trophy candidate. Both Jones and Brennan knew that one missed game could take him down the list a bit.

Jones did the right thing. He opted for health. He sat Brennan out against Nevada for all but two plays. He decided that he didn't need to win at all costs, and he nearly lost.

As expected, Brennan's stock slipped in the Heisman race, as Florida quarterback Tim Tebow's has risen. Such is the nature of this fickle award.

To be clear, this is not an argument for Hawai'i to be No. 1, even if it beats Washington and goes to 12-0. Strength of schedule has to factor in somewhere, somehow, and Hawai'i did play Charleston Southern, after all. But then, Kansas was contending to be No. 1 until this weekend, and it played nonconference games against Central Michigan, Southeastern Louisiana, Toledo and Florida International.

Kansas, of course, is a member of a conference that is in the BCS club, the Big 12.

Assuming Hawai'i beats Washington, no easy assumption, then it deserves to be in the BCS mix somewhere. Maybe even if it doesn't.

It is No. 12 now, which just gets it in the BCS door. But another weekend of games brings another shuffling of votes and computers, and nothing is a sure thing.

The BCS certainly could use this outsider, this interloper, to spice things up, to deviate from the sameness. America loves these kinds of stories.