UH, CSU can’t wait to erase bad memories of last season

FORT COLLINS, Colo. >> For the University of Hawaii, the opportunity to begin putting the nightmare of the 2017 season in its rear-view mirror has finally come.

Truth be told, the earliest season opener in their more than 40-year Division I history couldn’t come soon enough for the Rainbow Warriors, who play Colorado State in a nationally televised CBS Sports Network game at 1:30 p.m. today.

After a 3-9 season (and just 1-7 in the Mountain West Conference), “I think we’re all looking forward to kicking this thing off,” coach Nick Rolovich said.

And kicking away a slide the depth of which was compounded by a five-game losing streak to end the season and a heavy turnover in players and assistant coaches that carried over into the offseason.

“That’s who we were; I don’t think that’s who we are now,” said Rolovich, whose team gets the opportunity to prove that an offseason overhaul that included a rebuilt coaching staff and resumption of a run-and-shoot offense after a six-year absence was a success.

What originally shaped up to be a late September game on the Mountain West drawing board was moved by mutual agreement into the earlier “week zero” slot. The NCAA’s Hawaii scheduling exemption allows the ’Bows to open one week earlier than most of its Football Bowl Subdivision brethren as a way to facilitate scheduling for its most geographically distant member.

That proposal met with quick agreement from CSU. Not only will the change allow the two schools an open date in what might otherwise be a 13 games in 13 weeks gauntlet, but it means an early beginning of all-important conference play.

That’s something coaches, especially ones breaking in new starting quarterbacks, usually try to avoid, as attested to by the fact that this marks the first time UH has opened a season with a conference game since 1994, when they were in the old Western Athletic Conference.

But the Rams, like their visitors, are in a hurry to distance themselves from the struggles of what was, for them, a disappointing 7-6 finish.

The Rams were at their best last season in handing UH a 51-21 thumping at Aloha Stadium in September. But a promising start that portended so much more for CSU quickly tumbled from a 6-2 record to 7-6 with four losses in the final five games, including a bowl appearance.

Those were not the kind of results CSU was looking for when it got boosters and sponsors to ante up to help finance the building of its $220 million, gleaming on-campus stadium that debuted last year.

After his third consecutive 7-6 season, much of which was attributable to a defense that ranked 97th (among 130 FBS teams) in total defense, yielding 431.6 yards a game, head coach Mike Bobo jettisoned the defensive staff.

It was a sign of the importance of the change that CSU administrators committed $3 million in salaries for Bobo to hire his staff. That including $325,000 for new defensive coordinator John Jancek, a former Tennessee coordinator, the Coloradoan newspaper reported. At the time, it made, Jancek the highest paid defensive coordinator in the conference.

The ’Bows and Rams finally have their opportunity to begin working with a new slate. Now we wait to see what they do with it.

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