Perhaps the closest thing the University of Hawaii athletic department has to an heirloom is a cobweb-covered, soon-to-be 60-year-old NCAA bylaw.

Officially Bylaw 17.9.5.1, it is better known as the Hawaii Exemption, a rule that permits football teams playing in Hawaii an extra contest.

When David Matlin took office in April he became the 14th full-time UH athletic director to be entrusted with the care and preservation of a rule that has helped the school’s athletic program reach an all-collegiate schedule and eventually attain Division I status despite its geographic handicap.

Henry “Hank” Vasconcellos, UH AD and football coach, was its progressive father in 1955. Stan Sheriff, AD in the 1980s, was its protector, holding off challenges.

Now it falls to Matlin to make it relevant again by recasting the exemption.

When the Hawaii Exemption was enacted at the 1955 NCAA convention, it meant an 11th football game for UH and the opponents that came here to play the Rainbow Warriors. The idea was that the extra game, one above the then-allowable limit of 10, would encourage travel to Hawaii by permitting foes an extra game to assist in recouping their expenses. It helped bring Notre Dame, Michigan, Texas, USC, Nebraska, Oklahoma and a dozen other marquee opponents.

But over the years the NCAA has subsequently raised the ceiling on games to 11 and then 12 for everybody, meaning that now a 13th game isn’t as big of a lure. 

“I would say it is less impactful today than it was before the conference championships happened and they (the NCAA) added the extra game for everybody,” Matlin said. “We’re evaluating that.”

In fact, few teams choose to play a 13th game in years when the regular season is only 14 weeks long, especially with the advent of conference championship games.

In the process, it has gotten harder and more expensive for UH to attract quality nonconference opponents.

This year just two of the seven teams coming to Aloha Stadium — Colorado and Louisiana Monroe, neither of whom need worry about championship matchups — will avail themselves of the 13th game.

The task before UH now is to update the Hawaii Exemption for the times in a way that gives the school a leg up in scheduling again. 

The most likely plan would be to ask the NCAA to permit UH to open its football season one week in advance of everybody else, affording prospective opponents the opportunity of a week off afterward. Former AD Jim Donovan had started down that road before he was ousted in 2012. 

But the hangup with that, or any proposed legislation, is the process has changed. Unlike Vasconcellos in the 1950s and Sheriff in the 1980s, the path is no longer a straight shot through the NCAA convention. Whereas Matlin’s predecessors could make a speech before hundreds of delegates at the convention and work the room lobbying voters, as Vasconcellos did in winning an 86-67 vote in New York, these days there are committees, councils and boards that must be sold over a matter of months.

Matlin’s task is to dust off the Hawaii Exemption and make it meaningful again.

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