There is, as they like to say, an unwritten rule in football that a player shouldn’t lose his starting job because of an injury.

One of the reasons it presumably remains unwritten after all these years is because it is of dubious logic.

In football, as elsewhere, the overriding principle that trumps everything else is that you go with the player who gives you the best chance to win at every position, whether it is right guard or quarterback.

Especially at quarterback.

And you ignore it at your peril.

This would seem worth underlining if you are the University of Hawaii and off to an 0-4 start.

The Rainbow Warriors’ best chance to escape the ranks of the nation’s winless is right in front of them with a lineup of San Jose State

(1-3) on Saturday night at Aloha Stadium, followed by UNLV (3-2) and Colorado State (2-3) in succession.

Heading into the season, nobody but the most hardcore expected UH to beat Southern California, Oregon State or Fresno State. But this stretch is different. If the ‘Bows are to make something of the final two-thirds of their season, this, right here, is where it will have to start.

Which brings us back to this week’s flashpoint, the naming of a starting quarterback.

The biggest reason there is this much interest in an

0-4 team heading into Game 5 is because of quarterback Sean Schroeder, who came off the bench to guide the ‘Bows to 34 unanswered points in a 42-37 loss to No. 25 Fresno State.

The way Schroeder went about it from that first pass, a 60-yarder to Chris Gant — crisply and decisively — was impressive. Maybe things finally just clicked for the resilient fifth-year senior who has endured so much in a year plus at UH.

Or perhaps he saw his months of college football speeding past him if he didn’t have a statement performance and was fueled by the urgency.

Either way, Schroeder rallied the team, chasing an NCAA turnaround record and, in the process, awakened the faithful — and the not-so-faithful. Two things UH was in desperate need of at the time.

Until that eye-opening fourth quarter, it looked like the starting quarterback job was redshirt junior Taylor Graham’s to smoothly step back into as soon as he could fling off that sling that carried his left (nonthrowing) shoulder.

The feeling here being that Graham, until he went down in Reno, had begun to make — minimally at Oregon State and, more so at Nevada — perceptively larger strides toward achieving a breakthrough. The belief is still that Graham will emerge as the quarterback UH can win with, sooner rather than later.

But this week the choice of the starter needs to be based less on whether a job must be reclaimed due to an unwritten rule and more on who, in the here and now, gives these ‘Bows the best chance to win.

Schroeder has earned that much. After that, we’ll see.

For this is the point on the schedule where opportunity finally knocks for Hawaii. Now, we wait to see how the ‘Bows will answer.

And, of course, with whom.

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