Hawaii fans might not be there Saturday, but they will be watching

The mandate and, indeed, a slogan around University of Hawaii football for this year has been to "finish."

After losing five games by a touchdown or less in 2013, it is a worthy goal.

But the financial and emotional imperative at UH these days is for the Rainbow Warriors to start well, too.

Especially the season opener against 25th-ranked Washington on Saturday.

With all but the hardcore fans taking a wait-and-see approach to finding their way back to the Aloha Stadium ticket windows, the ‘Bows need a strong, uplifting beginning to this season like rarely before.

An upset would be ideal, but what UH absolutely positively requires is something to begin recapturing the imagination of fence-sitting fans put there by three consecutive losing seasons. Something that spreads the message of hope to the fringe followers, sooner rather than later.

Just how urgent that need has become was underlined Monday by UH athletic director Ben Jay’s projection of a turnstile gathering of "about 28,000" for the Washington game.

The hope is that UH’s "something for everyone" array of ticket plans will appeal to the curious but so far uncommitted over the final four days and help UH avoid what might otherwise be the smallest season-opening crowd in Halawa since 1977.

Back then UH was coming off a 3-8 season and a young, former UCLA assistant coach named Dick Tomey was making his head coaching debut. One that would eventually attract the biggest following in the team’s history.

The early signs this year point to a populace that wants to see some prospects of a turnaround from the 1-11 record of last year before it invests in 2014. All they ask is some signs more tangible than temporal.

After the events of last week, in which the depth of UH’s financial plight was laid wide open, it is better understood that as football goes, so, too, does the rest of the 21-sport athletic department. And, right now, both need a big boost.

It hasn’t helped UH’s straits that the kickoffs for both the opener and next week’s game with Oregon State have been advanced to 4:30 p.m. to accommodate TV under terms of the Mountain West contract or that the CBS Sports Network will show both here live.

Even with 3,000-4,000 tickets sold to Huskies fans, according to Jay, UH officials said Monday that the ticket count was hovering around 26,000.

It was a jarring sign of the times last year when UH opened with No. 24 USC, long the best draw UH has had going for it, that only 34,495 made it through the turnstiles. And a good portion of them were in cardinal and gold. This just three years after the Trojans helped UH set its single-game record for ticket revenue.

Now comes Washington with a sobering reminder of its own. The last time the Huskies set foot in Aloha Stadium, it was packed to the rafters and swayed as if to test the facility’s structural integrity.

Of course, that was the final regular season game of the 2007 march to the Sugar Bowl. And, as history would have it, that was also the last time UH had a home sellout.

Now, seven years later, UH is desperate to win some of them back.

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