Will Warriors find luck in adding a 13th game?

The University of Hawaii has one more week to do what it has been unable to do for the past 26: find a 13th game for its 2012 football schedule.

The question is, how much do the Warriors really want to find one now?

The more they think about it, probably not all that much.

Without filling the vacancy by the Jan. 15 Mountain West Conference deadline, UH figures to be left with a 12-game regularseason schedule but would be eligible for a bowl game by winning six of them.

However, should the Warriors play a 13th game, the maximum for them allowed by NCAA rules, they’d have to win seven games to appear in a bowl. No small consideration after a bowl-less 2011, the impending move to the MWC and the addition of a new head coach.

Most years the Warriors would pull out all the stops to nail down No. 13, here, there or practically anywhere. Back in July, when Texas State pulled the plug on what UH contended was an agreement in principle half a year in the making for a Warriors home game, they were looking at all options.

And, they were furious about it being the second time in less than a year UH sought to refill a 2012 schedule that was thought to have been completed. This time, athletic director Jim Donovan was so irritated by what, in football scheduling terms, was an 11th-hour pullout, that he vowed, “we won’t be working with Texas State anymore in my tenure.”

But that was the summer and a lot has changed since UH was the favorite to win the Western Athletic Conference in 2011. They eventually went 6-7 and, partially as a result, now have a new coach facing a decidedly uphill schedule.

THE NORM CHOW era opens in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum against a Southern California team, still featuring Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback Matt Barkley, that will likely be ranked in the top five of the preseason polls. Then there is the matter of playing at Brigham Young a few weeks later, a team that inflicted a 41-20 loss on UH in the regular-season finale.

Throw in their MWC debut, which includes road stops at Air Force, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State, and the Warriors have little stomach for adding what would be a school-record seventh road contest unless financial considerations say strongly otherwise.

But, except for nibbles from some Football Championship Subdivision teams, they’ve been hard pressed to find somebody willing to play in Aloha Stadium on short notice, especially if it means giving up an open week. And since the Warriors already have one FCS opponent, Lamar, adding another would mean the double whammy of needing seven victories while being able to count just one of the FCS foes for bowl eligibility purposes.

This coming week, the Warriors find themselves between the Mountain West and a hard place with a decision to make. And the smart one looks to be less of a schedule, meaning more of a chance for their football program.