Ferd Lewis: Hawaii takes Pictures Plus to a new level on sideline

Is success in the cards for the University of Hawaii football team this season?

You might wonder while glimpsing the Rainbow Warriors’ card-flashing sideline at games this season.

A mainstay so far, both at home at Aloha Stadium and on the road at Husky Stadium in Seattle last week, have been the large, flat-screen-TV-sized placards that are held up on the sideline by UH players at each game.

On one side, facing the field of play, you might see a card featuring a Spam musubi or cone of shave ice (Or “ice shave,” as they say in Hilo). On the flip side, facing the grandstands, is the name of a commercial entity such as Pictures Plus, Murphy’s or Cycle City.

In the Delphic world of college football coaches, where you try to keep opponents guessing at every turn, the picture side of the card might be a signal, head coach Nick Rolovich said. “It might have a play on it or it might just be a decoy. Some games they may mean something — and some games they don’t.”

Some speculated that the shave ice picture, which the University of Arizona team could see from its sun-toasted sideline on the 88-degree afternoon in the opener, was its own form of psychological warfare.

Then, there was the picture of UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway. A warning to opponents, perhaps, of who might be waiting in case things get a little too chippy on the field?

Sideline cue cards aren’t exactly new, of course. Basketball coaches have used them for years to signal defenses or plays, though usually with numbers. And Chip Kelly, when he was the head football coach at Oregon (2007-12), popularized them with pictures of ESPN announcers (UO graduate Neil Everett and Lee Corso were prominently featured), news-makers and various logos.

Alabama and USC are among other marquee schools that have used sideline cards, though not as advertising vehicles.

Kelly reportedly got the idea from Oklahoma State, which played the Ducks in the 2008 Holiday Bowl, and embraced it with cards that had different images in each quadrant after concerns about opponents stealing Oregon’s hand signals.

But Rolovich, as he is wont to do, has added another layer, putting ads on the back. At Nevada, where Rolovich was an offensive coordinator for three years, they did it to thank a hotel sponsor. Here there are all manner of businesses being mahaloed.

In its rental agreement with Aloha Stadium, UH has the rights to below-the-rail and on-field advertising signage, but those proceeds do not go directly to football, Rolovich said.

“That’s just Rolo being Rolo, scratching to find a way to do something with their limited resources,” said Pictures Plus owner Kent Untermann, a former UH tight end (1981-84).

“We helped the team out with a couple things and weren’t expecting anything, but Rolo, being gracious, asked kind of cryptically, for a copy of our logo,” Untermann said. “He said he was going to do something. I thought, maybe, from what he hinted that he’d put our name on the back of a ticket (stub) or something like that. Nothing this big.”

Meanwhile, imagine this week’s opponent, Central Arkansas, trying to fathom what the Spam musubi is, much less what play it might — or might not — represent.

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