As he has done much of this season, Pete Derzis will likely text a hearty “go get ’em!” or similar encouragement to University of Hawaii officials before today’s football game with Massachusetts.

Then, he will stay up into the wee hours of Sunday morning on the East Coast to follow the Rainbow Warriors’ score.

There is probably no other Alabama graduate who follows UH with such zeal, but, then, nobody beyond these shores has as much riding on whether UH appears in the Hawaii Bowl, either.

Derzis is the senior vice president for ESPN Events, a network subsidiary that owns and operates the Hawaii Bowl, and if the ’Bows are chomping at the bit to get back into the postseason after a five-year absence, ESPN has its own urgency about wanting them there.

Attendance at the game and TV viewership have both declined about 50 percent since the hometown team last appeared in the bowl game in 2010.

The announced attendance for last year’s game matching San Diego State and Cincinnati was 22,793, the fifth consecutive decline. TV viewership, according to Sports Media Watch, was 1.6 million, the second consecutive drop and less than half of the number that tuned in for UH’s 2010 appearance against Tulsa.

Today’s game is the closest UH has come to earning a place in the backyard bowl since 2011, when the ’Bows were beaten by Brigham Young, 41-20, in the regular-season finale to finish 6-7, one victory away from bowl eligibility.

The difference this year is, if the ’Bows (5-7) beat UMass (2-9), a 6-7 record will be deemed good enough to secure a place in the postseason.

Because of the proliferation of bowls — there are 40 games this year, compared to 35 in 2011 — a number of bowl slots could go unfilled due to what the NCAA likes to term an “insufficient number of deserving teams,” thereby opening the side door for UH and others.

Last year, three 5-7 teams — San Jose State, Minnesota and Nebraska — got in that way.

ESPN Events owns and operates 13 bowl games and the Hawaii Bowl was one of the first in its lineup in 2002. The idea was that for UH, it would prevent situations such as 2001, when the ’Bows were left without a bowl bid despite a 9-3 record that was punctuated with a 72-45 thumping of ninth-ranked BYU.

For ESPN it would provide additional programming at a time of high demand.

And for the first nine years everybody was happy. UH made six Hawaii Bowl appearances (plus a Sugar Bowl showing) and, as Derzis liked to remind then-head coach June Jones, “we’re some of your biggest fans.”

But then came the drought of five consecutive losing seasons and two head coaching changes. Fresno State made two appearances and UH none.

Now, the ’Bows are on the brink of a breakthrough, if they can put away the Minutemen, who are 7½-point consensus underdogs on the Las Vegas betting lines.

A 6-7 UH team might not approximate the 40,000-plus announced turnouts for the ’Bows and Tulsa (2010), Notre Dame (2008) or Arizona State (2006), but it would trump the matchup of anybody else the bowl could match from the Mountain West and Conference USA.

I mean, imagine the excitement locally over, say Middle Tennessee vs. Colorado State? Old Dominion vs. Boise State, anybody?

And while the return of Hawaii doesn’t automatically guarantee a ratings boost, it does improve the visual impact with more people in the seats. As viewers know, there is little that inspires you to keep on clicking than the glimpse of a game being played before a sparse gathering. After all, if supporters of the teams aren’t excited enough to show up, then why would anybody else watch?

Which is why there will be fingers crossed at Aloha Stadium and ESPN tonight.

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