Hawaii Bowl still a TV draw without UH

When Norm Chow was announced as the University of Hawaii football coach in 2012, ESPN Events senior vice president and general manager Pete Derzis said, "Tell Norm we here in Charlotte (N.C.) will be his biggest fans."

The rooting interest from 4,678 miles away wasn’t hard to fathom: Charlotte is headquarters for ESPN Events, which owns and operates the Hawaii Bowl.

And two of the three years preceding Chow’s arrival UH had failed to become bowl eligible, with Hawaii Bowl crowds dropping off correspondingly.

But Chow has yet to deliver the hoped-for revival and Wednesday’s game, which matches Fresno State and Rice, will be the fourth in a row and fifth in six years without a UH presence.

In that period, both Fresno State and Nevada have spent more Christmas Eves (two each) at Aloha Stadium than the home team and the game has lost Sheraton as its decade-long title sponsor.

But if there is any angst at ESPN Events, a subsidiary of the self-proclaimed "Worldwide Leader" in sports TV, it is well cloaked. Derzis maintains that ESPN, remains committed to the Hawaii Bowl, saying, "We plan on hosting the Hawaii Bowl for many years to come."

That is an apparent reference to an agreement that, beginning with this season, ties the Mountain West Conference to sending a representative to the Hawaii Bowl five times through 2019.

Clearly, the folks at ESPN would like that to be UH, which, on average, is worth an extra 10,000 fans per game, according to announced attendance figures over the bowl’s 12-year history.

But this being ESPN, which owns and operates 11 bowls and airs 35 of the 39 bowls and playoffs, providing programming and TV viewership is the bottom line. Think of it as a bowl channel, wrapped around basketball interludes, between Dec. 20 and the Jan. 12 national championship game.

Part of the beauty of this game for ESPN is that with this time slot — 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific — and little to rival it on Christmas Eve, any competitive matchup should do well.

The numbers for the Hawaii Bowl have remained respectable, with 2013’s Oregon State-Boise State game pulling in an average combined (live and replays) audience of more than 3 million viewers, according to Nielsen numbers. That’s only slightly smaller than the 2008 UH-Notre Dame game.

"The game is a wonderful placeholder on Christmas Eve and we expect that to continue," Derzis said. "The mainland public loves watching the game in Hawaii as they are settling in on Christmas Eve, so we’ve always had success with the Hawaii Bowl in its time slot and we’ve been blessed with some good, really competitive games."

Still, Derzis acknowledges, "We would certainly like to have UH in our game with some degree of consistency. But we understand that things run in cycles and Coach Chow is rebuilding the program. We have high hopes that UH will again take its place in the game in the near future."

In the meantime, Derzis said, "We continue to follow the UH scores this season –with more interest than anybody on the East Coast."

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