TV money likely to expand gap between UH and Pac-12

For all the prestige of the upper-crust Pac-10, you might be surprised just how much the University of Hawaii has historically managed to hold its own in football.

To be sure there have been poundings by Southern California, but there have also been bowl victories over Oregon State and Arizona State and road wins at California and Oregon.

Against a cross section of competition, the Warriors have just about played the "conference of champions" even, going 11-12 as a Division I member.

But for how much longer?

The Warriors’ first two games of the 2011 season will be against Colorado and Washington, and they are the last ones scheduled before the checks from the now Pac-12’s windfall $3 billion, 12-year, top-tier TV contract with ESPN and Fox start arriving in 2012.

At that point the annual difference in average TV money between the Pac-12 and the Mountain West, of which UH will be a member in football, will rocket from $5 million to about $13 million per school per year for the first few years. (The contract pays Pac-12 schools about $15 million per year initially, but escalator clauses will take it higher in later years, with a $20.8 million per-school annual average for the life of the contract. Those figures do not include proceeds from the launch of the Pac-12’s own network or Bowl Championship Series money).

And as the disparity in funding expands, we are left to wonder if the competitive gap will widen proportionately.

This year oddsmakers have installed UH as a 61/2-point pick over the Buffaloes in the Sept. 3 kickoff at Aloha Stadium and, depending on how their openers play out, could have the Warriors a slight underdog a week later in Husky Stadium.

But as those years of $13 million disparities pile up, becoming $26 million over two years and $39 million over three, etc., you wonder what future spreads will look like. That kind of moolah can buy a lot of facility improvements, upgrade coaching salaries and polish up recruiting. So much that in 2015, when UH is again scheduled to play CU and UW in succession, how much will the equation have changed? Will the Warriors suddenly be staring up at two-touchdown spreads?

One reason the Warriors have done as well as they have against the Pac-10 is that, for all the brand name of conference affiliation, there hasn’t been that much difference budget-wise between UH and the traditionally lower-end Pac-10 teams such as Washington State and Oregon State.

But the new TV deal is like handing an annual lottery ticket to the Cougars and Beavers. Not only will they have millions more to spend on enhancements, they’ll also have more to sell in recruiting with the expectation that all of their football games will be televised.

They might still be fighting an uphill battle inside the Pac-12 against USC, but outside of the BCS conferences, they will surely take a couple of steps up.

And while football is where vast amounts of the money will go, it isn’t hard to see it making a big difference in other sports — women’s volleyball, baseball etc. — when the big bucks trickle down; witness the across-the-board powers the Southeastern Conference schools have become.

So, you hope the Warriors can make the most of their shots at the Pac-12 this year, because the future might not afford them such opportunities very often.

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