What we have Saturday at Aloha Stadium just might be the University of Hawaii’s best — and last — chance to beat Oregon State for many years to come.

Never mind that the Rainbow Warriors are 10-point underdogs. That figures to be as good as it gets for a while.

Maybe a long while. Like until Joey Iosefa Jr. suits up. 

It isn’t that UH will never ever beat OSU again, just that the preponderance of dollars that are beginning to flow the Beavers’ way will increasingly shape the odds against Hawaii.

By the time their next two contracted meetings come about, 2019 here (in Kapolei, Halawa, Moiliili or wherever UH is playing its games at that point) and 2021 in Corvallis, the Beavers will have cashed and invested a handful of those megabucks Pac-12 disbursement checks.

The Pac-12 is in its third year of a $3 billion, 12-year TV deal with ESPN and Fox, and the Beavers’ first check (2012-13) was for $19,795,550. Basically more than double what the old TV rights deal paid them.

Contrast that with UH, which gets $2.5 million in TV rights in a good year. And, lately, the years have not been good.

That much of a difference will help buy a lot of football bells and whistles in Corvallis. Currently there are plans for a $42 million expansion and renovation of the Valley Football Center, the Beavers’ operational home attached to Reser Stadium.

And the thing is, when UH folks visited the center last year they thought it was already a Shangri La they’d like to take home.

Throw in the wherewithal to fund year-round, 24-hour training tables, cost of attendance stipends and their own TV network, and OSU can put even more distance between itself and UH.

With newly acquired riches, Pac-12 teams are slapping up new facilities and investing across the board. Washington State, for example, just completed a $130 million football overhaul of Martin Stadium and its operations center. When UH goes to Boulder, Colo., in two weeks, it will see construction on $143 million in additions and renovations to Folsom Field and practice facilities underway.

The only reason OSU hasn’t gone construction mad yet is that it has been paying off debts accumulated from the days when the school routinely tossed in $4 million to $5 million annually to help athletics stay afloat.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Until the Pac-12 money began to flow, maybe the biggest difference between OSU and UH was the late Al Reser. The Beavers had a refrigerated-food magnate who underwrote a lot of things, including the stadium that carries his name, and UH didn’t.

Fact is, what head coach Mike Riley and athletic director Bob De Carolis have done in the conference over the past decade with what they have had to work with, particularly in the shadow of Phil Knight U., has been remarkable.

With money, they and their successors will pose deeper challenges for UH.

So it behooves UH to make the most of its chances Saturday, before the full weight of all that cash hits.

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