After 44 years, the Rainbow Classic has hit a midlife crisis.

Faced with the reality that it can no longer compete with younger, more attractive tournaments, the Rainbow Classic will celebrate its 45th anniversary this week with a semi-retirement party.

The 45th Outrigger Hotels Rainbow Classic will run Saturday through Tuesday at the Stan Sheriff Center. This will be its last year as an eight-team tournament.

Next season, the inaugural Diamond Head Classic will be held during Christmas week as an eight-team tournament at the Sheriff Center. The Rainbow Classic will downsize to a four-team tournament, and probably will be held in November or early December.

"The Rainbow Classic has all the tradition, but let's face it, it has seen its day and that day has passed," said Jim Leahey, the television voice of University of Hawai'i athletics. "Like everything else in life, there's change."

The University of Hawai'i men's basketball team has served as host of the Rainbow Classic every year since the first one in 1964, and will continue to do so next season. ESPN will run the Diamond Head Classic, although the Rainbow Warriors will be designated the home team.

"It was time to deal with this," Leahey said. "This tournament has struggled to attract teams, and it wasn't getting the national exposure."

Chuck Leahey, Jim's father, and former UH basketball coach Red Rocha are credited with developing the Rainbow Classic.

It started in 1964 with the help of two local military teams — the Hawai'i Marines and Subpac.

"The university didn't have the money to support an eight-team tournament, but my father and Red wanted it to be an eight-team tournament, so the military teams were brought in," Leahey said. "It was the time of the (military) draft, so they had some great players."

The Hawai'i Marines won the inaugural Rainbow Classic.

Leahey thought the tournament might not continue after Utah State head coach LaDell Andersen got punched in the face by the head of officials on the opening day of the first Rainbow Classic.

"What a way to start," he said. "A coach of one of the visiting teams gets punched out."

But it endured, and eventually became one of the best tournaments in the country during the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

"All the teams wanted to come here," Leahey said. "Then Maui came along and now all of the teams want to go there."

The Maui Invitational — hosted by Chaminade — emerged as the premier tournament in the mid-1990s. What's more, the Maui Invitational is run every year during Thanksgiving week, which is apparently a better time of year for visiting teams.

"The Rainbow was always during Christmas time, either right before or right after," former Hawai'i basketball coach Riley Wallace said. "Some teams didn't like that because they had to make that long trip back home and then they'd lose their first conference game and blame the travel."

Wallace, who was the head coach of the 'Bows for 20 Rainbow Classics, said he never wanted to change the dates for the tournament.

"It's a fun time of year — there's no school, a lot of people are on vacation," he said. "It was a good time of the year to have basketball all day."

This year's Classic features a field of parity, even if not powerhouses. Joining Hawai'i are Buffalo, Colorado, Colorado State, Coppin State, George Washington, Pepperdine and Vermont.

"This being the 45th Classic, the last one in this format, our guys are going to do everything they can to win this," Hawai'i head coach Bob Nash said. "It means a lot to our basketball program. This has been one of the top tournaments in the country for years and years."

The Diamond Head Classic is hoping to fill that role next season.

"It's a financial move and ESPN is supposed to pick up the tab for the Diamond Head," Wallace said. "You never like to lose something as traditional as the Rainbow, but with the economy the way it is, it's a good thing for the program and the school to have ESPN come in and help."

For the record, the Rainbow Classic will keep its records, even when it becomes a four-team tournament next season.

"I'm glad there's still going to be a Rainbow Classic. You should have a remnant there as kind of an esteemed award for a 45-year entity," Leahey said. "It won't be nationally televised and it will have only four teams, not eight. But it will still be called the Rainbow Classic, and that alone will jog so many memories."

Among the most memorable: