Imagine nine lectures of a half-hour each, one after another. "Instructors," we’ll call them, telling you stuff you pretty much already know, and in pretty much the same tone and style as the instructors before and after. When it comes time for questions, they often try to answer without really answering (they don’t want anyone, especially the other instructors, to find out too much about their projects yet).

And since the previous night was a school night, you got to sleep early — early in the morning, following extensive field research on the science of random outcomes.

Welcome to the WAC Football Media Preview — Reno, July 2005. By the end of the day and the final lectures, you’re hoping for something, anything different.

Come on, Coach, I’m falling asleep here. Tell a joke. Light your hair on fire. Say you’re running for president.

Did I really just drool on my notebook? Well, I guess that’s not as bad as the guy next to me. He’s snoring.

Finally we are saved, as into the classroom struts Nevada coach Chris Ault — with the attitude (or what he likes to call "Nevada-tude") of a general about to brief his unit commanders on tomorrow’s invasion.

He wakes us up. He has news for us. He has invented an offense.

"I call it the pistol," Ault shouts. "The beauty of this pistol (emphasizing it so we’d remember where we’d heard it first, no doubt) is that it’s equally great for running the ball and passing it."

Sure, I was now in full smirk mode, but he had my attention. I’d gotten my wish — something different, something new to write about. I called it the sawed-off shotgun and gave it two paragraphs, partly out of deference to Ault since he was in the College Football Hall of Fame but mostly because I found it to be funny.

WHO KNEW THEN that five years later the pistol would be all the rage? Who knew it would be implemented by Norm Chow (UCLA’s Norm Chow, that is) in a victory over Texas? Who knew Hawaii would even employ elements of it?

They even run it now at Portland State, which seems sacrilegious, since that’s where Mouse Davis and June Jones first rained hell on unsuspecting foes with the run-and-shoot — foes like Ault’s Nevada team. And things haven’t exactly thawed between Davis and Ault since they nearly duked it out at a game between the Vikings and the Wolf Pack a few centuries ago.

"Let’s just say we had a confrontation," says Davis, now the Hawaii receivers coach, as Nevada and its 6-0, 19th-ranked pistoleros visit UH, which is 4-2 after winning three in a row.

"I’ve got respect for him as a coach. You can’t knock his record. As far as football goes he does a very good job," Davis says, then adding that the ultimate sign of regard is … theft? But only after a proper waiting period. "Football coaches are slow to evolve. Everybody knows what they’re running is the best. I’m bullheaded about football, like Chris Ault is probably bullheaded about football. But not so much that we’re not willing to steal. But if you steal and it doesn’t fit what you do, you’re stupid."

Of course, great personnel will always make you a lot smarter. That’s where Colin Kaepernick comes in, Nevada’s Robo QB who eats up turf faster than the Man vs. Food dude takes down hoagies. He’s become an accurate passer (think Happy Gilmore learning to putt), which makes his running more of a threat.

"If you pop in the film you see Kaepernick making plays left and right," UH defensive lineman Vaughn Meatoga says. "He takes nothing and makes something out of it. He breaks containment and goes for 50-yard touchdowns. These things are not scripted."

And as we were reminded last week, neither are the outcomes of college football games.

So while the Warriors will rightfully take Kaepernick and hard-running tailback Vai Taua seriously, they won’t be in awe. Not a week after routing Fresno State on the road.

Plus, UH has a blazing quarterback of its own, Bryant Moniz, and this edition of the run-and-shoot is locked and loaded with weapons galore.

"Mo breaks contain and he makes things happen," Meatoga says. "He and the receivers communicate telepathically."

This should be the game of the year at Aloha Stadium, a shootout with plenty at stake. And much more entertaining than a long afternoon of coachspeak in July, garans.