Hula Bowl approved for 2020 return to Aloha Stadium

The Hula Bowl college all-star football game, once a 62-year fixture and centerpiece of Hawaii’s sports lineup, is scheduled to return next year.

The Aloha Stadium Authority on Thursday gave unanimous approval to a request for Jan. 25 or 26, 2020 dates for the game, depending on the conclusion of network TV negotiations.

It would mark the return of a game that began in 1947 in Honolulu Stadium and was last played in 2008 at Aloha Stadium.

“I’m very excited to have the Hula Bowl back,” said Mike Iosua, a Stadium Authority member and former University of Hawaii lineman who appeared in the 2002 game.

Former UH and NFL player Rich Miano, the game’s executive director, said he is in negotiations for possible TV and national presenting sponsor agreements.

The game, Miano said, would use NFL rules and have prominent former NFL head coaches running the Aina and Kai teams. The game would feature leading college players and UH stars and also include two players each from Japan and Australia.

The game was the creation of sports entrepreneur and former Honolulu Stadium manager Mackay Yanagisawa and partner Paul Stupin and brought a Who’s Who of college players to Hawaii over the years, including more than a dozen Heisman Trophy winners.

But with the arrival of the Pro Bowl here in 1979 and competition from the other all-star games, especially the NFL-aligned Senior Bowl, the Hula Bowl increasingly began to struggle in the 1990s.

It was later owned by Gannett Corp. charities, the University of Hawaii Foundation and promoters Lenny and Marcia Klompus, among others, and experienced several operators and changes.

Amid declining attendance the game was moved from Aloha Stadium to Maui’s War Memorial Stadium in 1998. After an eight-year stay and additional changes in operators, it returned to Aloha Stadium in 2006. But the 2008 game drew an estimated 2,000 and quietly went dark.

In 2016, a son and daughter of the game’s last operator, Atlanta-based Nick Logan, announced plans to hold a 2018 game in Raleigh, N.C., and then return it to an unnamed site in Hawaii in 2019.

In his campaign for re-election, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory heralded the coming of a revived Hula Bowl to Raleigh after the state lost NBA and NCAA events due to a controversial law that was seen as anti-gay. “North Carolina is proud to welcome the return of the Hula Bowl,” McCrory said in a news release.

But he did not win re-election, state support evaporated and neither the 2018 game in Raleigh nor the proposed 2019 game in Hawaii ever came off.

Miano told the Authority he believed the game could carve a niche in the all-star game lineup that includes the Senior Bowl, East-West Shrine Game, NFLPA Collegiate Bowl and Tropical Bowl as a place for draft-eligible players to showcase themselves for the NFL, XFL and Canadian Football League.

Meanwhile, the Stadium Authority, in response to what it termed “rumors” about future plans for the long-running Swap Meet and Marketplace, said in a statement, “The current plan is to keep the Swap Meet and Marketplace in operation while the new Aloha Stadium is being constructed.”

The statement added, “We want the Swap Meet and Marketplace to remain central to the future of the new venue and accommodations of vendors’ needs will be integrated into the new facility’s programming.”