A 30,000-seat stadium where the University of Hawaii football team would play its games is not a new idea.

Coach June Jones envisioned one back in 2001. That’s when he first got a look at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in Dallas. (Little did any of us know then it would be his future home field.)

The Warriors returned to the islands with a 38-31 overtime win over Southern Methodist 13 years ago. But it seemed all Jones could talk about was the beautiful, brand-new facility smack in the middle of Big D. It’s just the right size for a typical mid-major college program.

“That’s what we need here,” Jones said, repeatedly.

Back then, with crowds still regularly in excess of 30K at 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium, I couldn’t see it. Perhaps Jones knew that UH football on pay-per-view — coming to an uncle’s garage or sports bar near you, in 2002 — would eat away at the turnstile count like termites taking down the old Honolulu Stadium bleachers. Except much faster.

I don’t know if Jones accounted for three consecutive losing seasons a decade down the road, leaving the athletic director considering cutting expenses by tarping the empty upper deck at Halawa.

He would certainly, however, understand Ben Jay’s frustration with the Stadium Authority. Remember how hard a time he had getting rid of antiquated, injury-causing AstroTurf in favor of the more player-friendly FieldTurf? It didn’t matter how much sense it made. It was all about posturing and politics.

Now, word leaks to the Legislature that Jay has put out a request for quotations for a “30,000-seat multipurpose event facility.”

Apparently, judging by reaction, Jay was supposed to inform the state Senate president and everyone else in the free world that he wanted to get a professional assessment of how much it would cost to build a new venue for football, soccer, concerts and other events — UH and otherwise.

Research for this potential future facility has nothing to do with past and current problems with projects on campus. But UH is an easy target.

“Obviously I’m thinking long-term, maybe at least 10 years down the road,” Jay said. “There’s no timeline, no site selection. It’s ‘Tell me what it might look like, how much acreage it would take and how much it might cost.’”

Some say the idea of a UH-managed facility for football is as much a pipe dream as trying to get into the Pac-12, another of Jay’s long-term projects. But Jay is paid to think big — which in the stadium case, is actually smaller.

While I don’t think downsizing to a home football stadium with fewer seats enhances a resume for a more prestigious conference, you can’t blame Jay for trying to find a better alternative to a half-empty Aloha Stadium.

Jay is tasked with thinking and acting on what might be best for the UH athletic department in the long-term as well as day-to-day. Yes, he’s not supposed to do this in a vacuum, but a $15,000 investment of UH Foundation funds hardly seems like a department head out of control.

Or, perhaps he has gone rogue by daring to challenge the authority of the Stadium Authority and the political maze of Hawaii by even thinking about a different facility for UH football without asking, in triplicate, “May I, please?”

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. Read his blog at staradvertiser.com/quickreads.