Hawaii Bowl offers UH postseason redemption

The first thing Nick Rolovich scheduled for this week was a wake-up call for his University of Hawaii football team.

It’s a little reminder that just because they’re in a bowl game it doesn’t mean they’ve arrived.

“A couple of guys forgot to go to class on Friday. So we’re going to have a little party on Monday morning,” Rolovich told reporters Sunday.

The festivities will likely include all-you-can eat grass drills and a not-so-fun run. Then, it will be time for “some respect and some congratulations,” Rolovich said.

The first-year head coach has walked the fine line between being Big Brother and big brother as well as can be expected with a downtrodden program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2010. It still won’t have one when all is said and done for 2016.

But the Rainbow Warriors have a chance to put an end to the string of losing years. To do so, they need to beat Middle Tennessee in the Hawaii Bowl on Dec. 24 and draw even at 7-7.

The Blue Raiders of Conference USA are 8-4, with 40 or more points in six games.

“Tony Franklin, everywhere he goes he scores points,” Rolovich said of MTSU’s grizzled offensive coordinator. “We’ve got to look at matching their score.”

The last time UH won in postseason was 10 years ago, when it crushed Arizona State 41-24 in the Hawaii Bowl. That set the stage for the run to the Sugar Bowl the next season. The impressive showing by Colt Brennan and his receivers — almost all of whom were set to return to college in 2007 — got Hawaii a preseason ranking of No. 23 in the Associated Press poll that facilitated a steady climb (despite a joke of a schedule) to No. 10 and a BCS bowl berth as UH went 12-0 in the regular season.

It was an example of how winning a bowl game can be a springboard for the future. In that case it helped Hawaii climb to nearly the very top of college football for a brief visit. Now, it can be a key steppingstone to rebuilding a solid base.

“The biggest thing is that the ‘H’ will be seen on Christmas Eve,” Rolovich said, when asked the benefits of playing in a bowl.

The program and Rolovich personally are both hungry for a postseason win. The only bowl game he appeared in as a player was an all-star game, and he won that one as MVP of the Hula Bowl. As a coach, he’s 0-4: losses as UH’s offensive coordinator in 2008 to Notre Dame and 2010 to Tulsa, and at Nevada to Arizona in 2012 and Louisiana-Lafayette in 2014.

Rolovich has emphasized that the Rainbow Warriors don’t play for only themselves, but for an entire state. In this bowl game, they also play for past teams that should have gone to postseason games. But there was nowhere to go.

There was no bowl game for the 9-2 team of 1981 that featured Gary Allen and Jesse Sapolu and a rock-hard defense. That team won its first seven games and was ranked 19th. That helped spawn the Aloha Bowl (1982-2000), but UH played in it just once.

And the very reason the Hawaii Bowl exists is that UH went 9-3 in 2001, but had no postseason game in which to play. The quarterback of the team that clobbered previously unbeaten BYU, 72-45, in the season finale said he plans to talk to the current Warriors about it. Rolovich threw eight touchdown passes in that rout.

“We haven’t bridged that yet, but I will,” Rolovich said. “I want them to respect the opportunity.”

I read in a headline somewhere Sunday that UH “earned” a Hawaii Bowl berth. That word is vastly misused these days, as it is in this case.

The definition of “earn” that relates to things not having to do money is this: “gain or incur deservedly in return for one’s behavior or achievements.”

The Rainbow Warriors received a bowl berth by virtue of more bowl slots being available than teams with winning, or even non-losing, records. We’ll know if they earned it by how they perform on Christmas Eve.

With that being said, the way things are now there’s no shame in appearing in a bowl game with a 6-7 record. There will be, though, if the Rainbow Warriors treat it as merely a reward and — as they did in some games this season — don’t show up ready to play from the opening kickoff.

Nick Rolovich will do everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen, while also allowing his team to enjoy the bowl experience. It’s a fine line.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick- reads.