When officials of the Western Athletic Conference and TV partner ESPN huddled early in the year, they quickly drew a circle around the University of Hawaii’s football game with Fresno State as the presumptive championship showdown.

“It (the game) was scheduled late in the season for that reason,” a WAC official said of the Nov. 19 date that is the latest matchup in the 20-year conference history of the two schools. And ESPN reserved the right to invoke a 12-day notice to televise the game.

The thought, according to the WAC, was that even if it didn’t turn out to be for the conference championship, it would surely impact who did win the title. In a rivalry that has given us the legendary screwdriver affair, Ashley Lelie’s and Craig Stutzmann’s big catches and Inoke Funaki’s magic among other memorable moments, we awaited another grand chapter with plenty on the line.

But as the Warriors and Bulldogs prepare to tee it up Saturday at Aloha Stadium, neither is in the running for the title nor will it have anything to do with who does win the title. ESPN will not be dispatching a crew here.

That parade has passed for the 5-5 (3-3 WAC) Warriors and 3-7 (2-3) Bulldogs, two perennial WAC powers now on salvage missions. We had hoped for so much more in a series that hasn’t lacked for dramatic moments, unforgettable characters or controversy.

Picked to finish first (Hawaii) and second (Fresno State) in the WAC by some of the finest minds of our time — the conference coaches and media who cover them — the teams have been detoured from what they had hoped would be a fireworks-filled WAC departure.

It will be the Warriors’ 257th — and last — WAC football game in 33 years of membership. It was an occasion they had hoped to use to plant an exclamation point on the milestone of back-to-back WAC titles en route to the Mountain West Conference.

For the Bulldogs, who haven’t shared a WAC title since 1999, this penultimate conference game was to have been part of a long overdue breakthrough.

With long-time tormentor Boise State having bolted to the MWC, this was a chance for both to get out of the Broncos’ decade-long shadow on their own way out the door, their own launching pad to the MWC.

But instead of being accomplished at the expense of the rabble they were leaving behind, they have been derailed by the WAC remnants. It has been inconsistent play and injuries, not overwhelming opposition that has done it. The NCAA currently ranks UH’s schedule No. 120 among 120 Football Bowl Subdivision members, while the Bulldogs are 84th.

UH was upset by San Jose State and Utah State, while the Bulldogs have been surprised by New Mexico State and Louisiana Tech.

Suddenly and definitely surprisingly, it is Louisiana Tech and Utah State that are still in the running for a WAC title with front-runner Nevada.

UH can still clinch a bowl bid and carve out an eight-win regular season; the Bulldogs not so much. But in this, the Warriors’ most enduring series, there is also the rivalry that has not lacked for ferocity. To that end, “you have to relish the moment,” Bulldogs coach Pat Hill said Monday.

That still means something when UH and Fresno State tangle. Just not as much as either hoped it would when the season began.

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