Along with boning up on their own plays and studying Oregon State's, this would also be a good week for a cover-to-cover rule book refresher by the University of Hawai'i football team.

From black letter to fine print.

Think what happened to Washington Saturday against Brigham Young, where officials applied the strictest letter-of-the-rule interpretation at a game's turning point, couldn't happen to the Warriors Saturday in Corvallis, Ore.? Think again.

The Pac-10 bills itself as the "conference of champions" and its members have won more national titles than any other. The Pac-10 sets a standard of excellence in many areas.

But football officiating isn't one of them.

People in the industry will tell you, off the record, the Pac-10 has a reputation for being a "weak link" in football officiating. That we-are-the-Pac-10 pride sometimes gets in the way of improvement.

For example, the Pac-10 is the only major conference with a hard and fast rule that only its officials will work games in its stadiums. When offered an opportunity to join the Big 12, Mountain West and WAC in a progressive regional blending of officiating crews, the Pac-10 passed. Mostly out of arrogance, you suspect, since some of its officials understood the merits.

Common sense tells you that what UW's Jake Locker did with the ball was hardly enough to merit the celebration penalty that played a role in the 28-27 loss. Because of the outcry from that and past controversies, Pac-10 officials will be closely watched in this week's non-conference games, including UH's.

The crew that handled the UW-BYU game won't be working UH's. Of course, it is the same unit that OSU coach Mike Riley is said to have "rested" in 2006. That is a polite term for "blackballed" which coaches can do when there are strenuous objections.

UH has less-than-fond memories of its last Pac-10 stadium encounter, a 61-32 loss at USC in 2003 where officiating had little to do with the outcome, but nevertheless the Warriors found themselves short-ended on a touchdown, one of two calls that ultimately resulted in an apology.

Two years ago, the Pac-10 suspended another crew for a series of errors that cost Oklahoma in a 34-33 loss at Oregon. An onside kick that touched an Oregon player before it went 10 yards was missed, as was the fact that OU, not the Ducks, recovered the ball. So blatant were the errors that this week's OU trip to UW was in jeopardy for a time.

The crew chief from the OU-UO game? Last year he was named the supervisor of Pac-10 officials.

The best thing UH can do is make sure this game doesn't come down to an official's call. But, just in case, the Warriors might want to make sure they know the rules backward and forward.

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