Not bad for a Plan C. No team from the Manoa home or the Golden Dome. But the third option — a solid football matchup with plenty of island ties — should be a charm for the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl.
Director Dave Matlin was able to regretfully forget about UH in late October, when the Rainbow Warriors fell to 0-7 after losing to Colorado State. While the bowl must accommodate the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA because of contractual tie-ins, Matlin is allowed to set his sights on other more attractive games as long as all the MWC and CUSA teams have dates.
So Notre Dame became a target. As late as last week Wednesday it appeared the Fighting Irish — who had a good ol’ time pounding UH 49-21 in the 2008 Hawaii Bowl — were in play.
When Notre Dame accepted the Pinstripe Bowl bid, Matlin pulled the Oregon State Beavers out of his hat to play Boise State from the Mountain West. It’s rightfully considered one of the, if not the, best of the non-BCS matchups.
"The Pac-12 element came into play the last (two weeks). The concept of it came up before that, but we had to wait to see how the schedule played out," Matlin said. "Obviously we want the Hawaii Warriors in there. Hopefully that’s next year. When you look at Boise and Oregon State, the local ties those markets have are very exciting."
Maybe enough to attract around 35,000, so the Hawaii Bowl can reach that 25,000 three-year average attendance to maintain accreditation? It might not matter, as good TV ratings could get that requirement waved off.
AS WE were reminded when UH played at Oregon State early in the season, Corvallis is a popular landing spot for Hawaii prep standouts looking for a school in a BCS conference. A big part of that is former UH assistant coaches Mike Cavanaugh, Mark Banker and Joe Seumalo (Seumalo also played for UH).
While this might be a nice homecoming story for Warrior fans, the current Hawaii coaches can’t like the idea of the Beavers coming into town around the holidays with the chance to make another impression on local prospects. They already turned Kaiser linebacker Fitou Fisiiahi in September.
Boise State doesn’t usually pull a whole lot of guys from here, but Punahou product Jeremy Ioane starts at safety. It’s also not good for the home team that he could be spreading word to ‘ballers of the good life in The City of Trees — even minus coach Chris Petersen, who has exited for Washington.
And whoever thought the Broncos’ basketball team might be a selling point?
When Boise State was conference shopping a couple of years ago, remember the opposition line of it being a football-only school? … What else do they bring to the table, rodeo?
Things have certainly changed. The Broncos are 8-1 in hoops headed into Saturday’s game at St. Mary’s and will play in the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic while the football team — with the same number of wins but three more losses — is also here.
Oregon State has the same tie-in, football (6-6) and basketball (3-2) both here for the holidays.
"Both also coming for basketball gives us an advantage in selling (travel) packages that we’ve been pushing the past eight to 10 months," Matlin said.
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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. Read his blog at staradvertiser.com/quickreads
