Three weeks ago in his stadium, University of Texas-El Paso head coach Mike Price gave the Hawai'i football team a rousing pep talk the week of the Warriors' game against New Mexico State.

On Christmas Eve, he could be facing the Warriors in theirs.

The Miners have emerged as a leading possibility to play Hawai'i in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl if both teams become bowl eligible and the Pac-10 is unable to field a representative, people involved in the process said yesterday.

The Warriors are 6-5 and need to win one of their two remaining regular season games — Saturday against Washington State, or Dec. 6 against Cincinnati — to become bowl eligible and represent the Western Athletic Conference in the Hawai'i Bowl at Aloha Stadium.

But the bowl, which is contracted to take the sixth selection from the Pac-10, could have an opening if neither UCLA (4-6) nor Arizona State (4-6) win out in their final two games or if the conference sends both Southern California (9-1) and Oregon State (8-3) to the Bowl Championship Series.

In that case, the bowl's "contingency agreement" with Conference USA could send a team here, according to C-USA associate commissioner Russ Anderson and others involved in negotiations. C-USA has six bowl tie-ins but would have seven bowl-eligible teams if UTEP (5-6) beats East Carolina (7-4) Saturday in Greenville, N.C.

Anderson said UTEP "would probably be a slight favorite" among the C-USA possibilities — Rice, Southern Mississippi and Memphis if all are bowl eligible — to play here. "But there are so many moving parts right now that things could certainly change," Anderson said.

C-USA teams were matched against WAC teams in five of the Hawai'i Bowl's first six years. But C-USA was removed from the rotation for 2008 and '09 in favor of the Pac-10.

UTEP and UH have met 31 times, mostly as WAC opponents until the Miners joined C-USA in 2005. Price, who faced UH in 1999 as Washington State's head coach, is a longtime friend of UH head coach Greg McMackin.