The University of Hawaii football team plays at Boise State today, and it behooves the Rainbow Warriors to look around, because you wonder how much things will have changed by the next time they appear.

Or even when that might be.

In the current Mountain West Conference scheduling rotation, UH isn’t due back in Boise until 2019 — if, indeed, the Broncos are still members of the MWC then.

Clearly the Broncos aren’t planning to be, if they can help it.

Things change fast in Boise, you know. Everything but the trademark blue turf, it seems.

The last time UH was there — 2010 for a Western Athletic Conference game — was two conference affiliations ago for the Broncos. And the place was called Bronco Stadium, seating just over 32,000.

Now, it holds 36,387 and is called Albertsons Stadium. There is the $22 million Bleymaier Football Center and a Bronco Vision video board in the north end zone, plus ribbon video boards stretching around the east and west facades of the stadium, four recent can’t-miss indicators of the Broncos’ rising aspirations.

The seating capacity has been boosted by 3,500, and a lucrative naming rights deal with the Albertsons supermarket chain pays the school $625,000 a year for 15 years. The Bleymaier Center is state of the art, with nearly 70,000 square feet of space housing the team locker room; a player lounge; weight room and athletic training area; coaches’ offices; position meeting rooms; an academic center and computer lab; and a recruiting lounge.

All of it slapped up in less than five years, hinting at the urgency the Broncos place on securing their future.

Basically the naming deal funds much of the Cost of Attendance for the Broncos, who are pledged to provide $5,100 per year for each scholarship athlete.

That it is the highest COA figure in the 12-member MWC — and five times what UH offers — and is no accident, of course. It is meant to be one more recruiting lure in case the smurf turf and jam-packed trophy room don’t take a prospect’s breath away.

With nine conference titles in the past 13 years, the Broncos have long tired of whipping up on the same list of opponents, be it in the old WAC or the MWC, which are pretty much the same thing these days.

It is no secret the Broncos have their eye on bigger things — for example, the Big 12. That misnamed 10-member league is seen as likely to add two members over the next few years, and the Broncos have long been mentioned as one of the best geographic and competitive fits.

They have done nothing to discourage it. "Competing against TCU and competing against those programs in the Big 12, if that were an opportunity, I feel like Boise State would go in there and compete and it would be an exciting environment to play in for us," Broncos coach Bryan Harsin told Fox Sports this summer.

UH has yet to win in Boise in five tries. Nobody should be surprised if today turns out to be the Warriors’ last chance for a while.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.