Is the ongoing dispute over the $400,008 that the University of Hawai'i claims former football coach June Jones owes the Warriors standing in the way of booking a UH-Southern Methodist showdown?

It doesn't take much reading between the lines to come to that conclusion.

On one hand we have UH asking the Mustangs if they'd be interested in playing in 2009 or 2010, the first two seasons the Warriors have an opening.

On the other, UH athletic director Jim Donovan said the Warriors were told by SMU, "our schedule is full for the next 10 years."

As Jones' successor, Greg McMackin, hopefully put it in February, a UH-SMU game ... "would be a natural. I'd love for us to compete against one another as two great programs. June and I have talked about that. We'd both love to do that."

Well, maybe, just one of them now.

For that was before March 7, the expiration of the 60-day period by which Jones' UH contract called for him to pay $400,008 in liquidated damages for leaving Manoa before the June 30, 2008 expiration of his five-year contract. That was before negotiations with Jones' agent, Leigh Steinberg, went nowhere and things were put on the track toward binding arbitration.

Steinberg has maintained that a verbal agreement with then-UH athletic director Herman Frazier allowed his client to leave without penalty after three years.

Meanwhile, according to UH, SMU is effectively saying get back to us in a decade.

Retribution for holding Jones to the contract?

"You could get that impression," Donovan said.

Of course, if SMU really wanted a game all it would have to do is play it here since the NCAA allows teams traveling to Hawai'i to play an extra game beyond the 12-game regular season limit. More than 40 years ago, the late Hank Vasconcellos persuaded the NCAA to grant the so-called Hawai'i Exemption to encourage teams to travel here. Something SMU has taken advantage of in the past.

By why not take this out of the hands of the lawyers and settle it on the field, where it belongs? Forget arbitration and make it winner-take-all.

Here's how you settle it. Square off at Aloha Stadium in a 2009 game with added incentive the kind of reality challenge college football has never seen:

If UH wins, Jones pays up at midfield after the game with one of those 5-foot cardboard checks. If SMU prevails, Jones gets to tear up the contract at midfield.

Think that would pack the stands and grab TV's attention?

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