Lake Washington sparkles just beyond the outfield fence and, on a clear day, there is snow-tinged Mount Ranier rising in the distance.

All of which makes the view from Husky Softball Stadium at the University of Washington, where the University of Hawaii opens NCAA tournament play Friday, one of the more scenic backdrops in the sport.

The Rainbow Wahine are definitely in a position to compare, appearing in their 11th NCAA postseason now. They’ve been to nine states and 10 campuses from Seattle to South Carolina and Tucson, Ariz., to Tuscaloosa, Ala.

What they haven’t seen in an NCAA postseason, no matter how clear the day, is the view from their own field in Manoa.

Rainbow Wahine Softball Stadium has yet to host an NCAA Regional or Super Regional and, barring an extremely fortuitous turn of circumstances bordering on hitting the lottery this weekend, they won’t this year either.

Even if the Rainbow Wahine (43-11), who open with Minnesota (35-17), emerge from the double-elimination Washington Regional, where UW (38-15) is favored, they would take a chain reaction of major upsets elsewhere across the landscape (think Longwood over Tennessee, Stony Brook over Missouri, etc.), to put them in a position to host one of eight Super Regionals next week.

At the start of each season the Rainbow Wahine understand, as head coach Bob Coolen says, “that something pretty incredible is going to have to happen for us to host.” They know there is scant margin for error, such as this year’s loss to Long Beach State or last year’s WAC tournament stumble.

Such is the way odds are stacked against non-Bowl Championship Series schools, especially one 2,500 miles off the beaten path.

All you need to know is that of the 16 four-team regionals this year, 15 are hosted by schools from BCS leagues. Only South Alabama of the Sun Belt Conference slipped in among the blue bloods. An investigation may follow.

And it was pretty much the same story in 2012 when Louisiana-Lafayette of the Sun Belt was the token outsider to host.

Because BCS schools, thanks to lucrative football TV and bowl revenues, have more money to lavish on facilities, coaches and recruiting, they are able to stack the RPI numbers and monopolize the brackets. Consider that this year 11 teams from the 13-member Southeastern Conference, are in the tournament, including Mississippi State, which didn’t even make the SEC tournament. Seven of them are hosts with an inside track on getting to the Super Regionals and World Series.

Which is a large part of why just one-non-BCS school — UH  — has appeared in the World Series the past four years. And why no outsider has gotten to the title game since Fresno State in 1999.

In the meantime, Coolen says the Rainbow Wahine will pass on the scenery, thank you, and take aim at the near miracle that it will take to propel them to being hosts.

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