In the newly crowned Florida Gators, the University of Hawai'i football team can say it played the eventual national champion on the road this past season.

But it isn't something the Warriors should want to be able to say again.

With the memory of a 56-10 pounding in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, the Warriors would be smart to swear off playing any more certified and projected national championship contenders in road, Christians-versus-Lions settings.

UH has played five eventual national champions, the last two, USC (2003) and Florida (2008), on the road to the tune of a combined 118-42 difference.

No more should the Warriors step in with No. 5-ranked teams in front of 90,575 chomping hostiles, especially if they have to fly five or six time zones to get there.

Play 'em at Aloha Stadium, of course. Lately, that has been tough enough for the time being. Play one of 'em a year here, if you can get 'em, but please spare us the 4,813-mile expedition to the East Coast Time Zone, especially.

What the Warriors were doing that humid August afternoon in Gainesville, Fla., we'll never understand. The passage of four months has done nothing to illuminate the thinking on that one.

There was no return game for UH. There was no cash windfall ($600,000) large enough to soothe that kind of a pummeling. The visibility, what there was of it, didn't enhance anything. And, as 35-point underdogs, there was was a snowball's-chance-in-you-know-where of shocking the world.

At one time then-head coaches June Jones and Steve Spurrier had talked a home-and-home series. But Spurrier left and, with the coming of Urban Meyer, so did any notion of a return game here. So, why the game was even scheduled is a mystery. But, then, so many things from the Herman Frazier era were head-shaking.

Jones, you suspect, figured as much which could be why he lampooned Gator quarterback Tim Tebow with impunity before hightailing it to Southern Methodist a month later.

Astutely, too, because that Florida loss seemed to take a lot out of the Warriors, which is hardly the way to start a new season.

We're not saying you have to start all of them with Central Arkansas, UH's Sept. 4, 2009 opponent of choice, but save the dispiriting drubbings, if you must, for the postseason where we're getting used to them.

Wisconsin (2009), Southern California (2010) and Colorado (2011) highlight the upcoming parade of marquee non-conference opposition to Aloha Stadium though, at this point you'd have to say only the Trojans smack of national title contender material.

Thankfully, athletic director Jim Donovan appears to share this view.

"It (playing a national championship pick on the road in front of a huge and hostile crowd), isn't anything we want to do," Donovan said the other day. "It could happen if somebody takes off and has a great season. But it won't be because we want it to."

That should be a lesson — one of several, anyway — learned from 2008.

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