It is too late for football coach Norm Chow, of course, but his new boss, athletic director David Matlin, is decidedly against schedules like the one the University of Hawaii will undertake in 100 days.
Playing 13 consecutive games without an open date?
Doubling up on what Board of Regents member Jeff Portnoy termed "body bag games" in appearances at Ohio State and Wisconsin?
Asked by regent Stanford Yuen if this is the kind of approach that the program might take in the future with football scheduling, Matlin said he wasn’t in favor of it.
"I don’t think I would schedule two games like that (Ohio State and Wisconsin on the road)," Matlin said. "I’m gonna take a hard look at scheduling 13 games in 13 weeks. I think that is tough."
Only two of the 131 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision teams will play 13 regular season games in as many weeks this season. And the Sept. 3 season opener at Aloha Stadium features both of them, UH and Colorado.
It is a gauntlet bound to be made more arduous if UH returns home between the road games at Wisconsin (Sept. 26) and Boise State (Oct. 3), as has been discussed. In that event the ‘Bows will travel approximately 42,000 miles this season, the most by any Hawaii football team.
No NFL team will come within 10,000 miles of it in the regular season and some will do a quarter of it.
The previous four athletic directors have had a hand in shaping the patchwork 2015 and ’16 nonconference schedules the ‘Bows will play and, now, Matlin will get an opportunity to bring some long-term consistency to charting the future course –though, barring cancellations, not right away.
As Matlin noted, "What is going to happen in the next couple of years, that’s already done."
To be sure, UH will be well paid for its games at Columbus, Ohio, ($1.2 million) and Madison, Wis., ($1.1 million) this season and Ann Arbor, Mich. ($1 million) in 2016. They will be, by at least $350,000, the three most lucrative regular-season road games in school history.
UH also has a game at Arizona in 2016 for $400,000, two weeks after going to Michigan.
"I do think, strategically, that a game like Ohio State or Wisconsin makes sense to do every so often, maybe even every year, especially if you can get a home and home," Matlin said. "I think that is ideal. But two of those in one year, I think, is tough."
Of the four games, technically just one, Arizona, comes with a home-and-home component, though UH does have a sidecar contract with Wisconsin that provides for one game here (2021) and one in Madison (2022) at the reduced rate of $400,000 for each visitor.
The reasoning for the doubling up this year, Matlin surmised, "was (due) to economic reality" of an athletic department long running in the red. He said UH expects to net $1.5 million-$1.8 million from the two games after expenses. But, Matlin said, "I think you have to find some other (long-term) solutions."
Just don’t expect Chow to find much consolation in that.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
