The Southern Methodist University football team is coming bowling here, again?

I mean, two bowl games, two visits to Aloha Stadium.

Of course, they come a quarter century apart and rich in symbolism.

In slightly less time than it took to build H-3, the Mustangs will celebrate a journey unique in NCAA major college football history with their Dec. 24 appearance in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl against a WAC opponent. That will be UH, if the Warriors beat Wisconsin, likely Nevada, if they don't.

This morning SMU head coach June Jones and school officials are scheduled to announce the Mustangs have accepted an invitation to appear in the game, their first postseason showing since the 1984 Aloha Bowl victory over Notre Dame.

Officially, the Mustangs said they will "make an important announcement regarding the SMU Football program ... "

Yes, you could certainly call it that when you rise from the ashes of the NCAA's so-called "Death Penalty" to return to the postseason. SMU shuttered its program for two seasons — 1987 (by NCAA order) and '88 (on its own) — due to a laundry list of habitual NCAA infractions, including paying players.

But the penalty ended up enduring longer than some sentences for murder. Five head coaches spent 20 seasons trying to get the Mustangs back to the postseason. Only once was there a winning season. So devastating was the penalty that the NCAA has refrained from imposing another like it in major college football.

So arduous became the task of rebuilding that when Jones' name was first linked with the SMU job in Hawai'i's 2007 march to the Sugar Bowl, the prospect seemed so unlikely as to be laughable. Even with the $2 million per season salary the well-heeled Mustangs were tossing around.

But Jones, in a resurrection reminiscent of that pulled off a decade earlier at once down-and-out UH, has brought the Mustangs back. From 1-11 in his inaugural season, 2008, to 7-5 at this point. From a culture of resignation to one of winning built on five games won by a touchdown or less this season.

With NCAA investigators at its heels in 1984, SMU knew its bowl days were numbered and wanted a bowl experience to remember for its 9-2 team. It chose the Aloha Bowl. It just didn't know how long it would have to savor it without an encore.

Now, 25 years later with a lot to celebrate — both as a program and individually — the Mustangs and their coach aren't going to Disneyland to do it. They're coming here, again.