The 1961 football season was to have marked a prideful turning point for the University of Hawaii.

After 45 seasons of playing schedules that were a chop suey of local club teams, military and college opponents, UH was to embark on its first all-collegiate schedule with nine games in 1961.

To put an exclamation point on it, head coach Hank Vasconcellos had lined up one of the perennial powers of the day, Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma Sooners, to come to Honolulu Stadium for the Dec. 9 finale.

But what was to have been a milestone season for the Rainbows quickly became a tombstone of sorts instead when the school announced it was dropping football.

It was the last fall that UH did not field a varsity football team until the current pandemic pummeled a 2020 season that was to have kicked off yesterday in Tucson against Arizona.

In a roundabout way, however, the darkness of the season that wasn’t eventually forced a deeper look at UH athletics and new resolve. When Gov. John A Burns (1962-74), left a lopsided game at Honolulu Stadium in disgust, he is reported to have told the school president, Thomas Hamilton (1963-68), to either find ways to field a competitive team “or forget it.”

Without Burns’ intercession — and his hand in creating the ‘Ahahui Koa Anuenue booster organization to help underwrite the vision — there probably wouldn’t have been any football for COVID-19 to disrupt today.

As Hawaii stepped into statehood in 1959, football was in a downward spiral. It had achieved a high point with the 6-0 upset of Nebraska in Lincoln, Neb., in 1955 under Vasconcellos, but later fell on hard times going four seasons without a winning record. Its coach was hung in effigy on campus, its games were regularly out-drawn by the high schools and it was losing money.

“Back then, you could not lose money,” Vasconcellos said in a 1989 interview. “Every event, whether it was football, basketball or whatever the sport, had to have a sponsor. If the event lost money, the sponsor would have to make up the loss.”

The 1960 season, in which UH had gone 3-7, resulted in a $10,000 loss that the alumni association had to make good on.

So, eight months before the scheduled kickoff of the 1961 season and mindful of the $60,000 in guarantees ($32,000 to the Sooners) it would have to pay visiting college teams as well as travel for the ’Bows’ four games on the continent, the Board of Athletic Control voted to drop football. It was a move backed by UH President Laurence Snyder and approved a day later by the Board of Regents.

Vasconcellos could have taken a buyout for the two years that remained on his contract but, instead, chose to resign asking only that the school take the money and use it to ensure the players’ scholarships.

Players that chose to stick around formed a club team that competed in the Athletic Association of Hawaii, a league that included the Kaimuki Spartans, Tantalus Rangers and Waikiki Surfers, drawing a few hundred fans a game.

But that stirred controversy when it came to Snyder’s attention that eight of the players were considered “part-time” students attending only non-credit night classes while on partial scholarships.

Still, it kept a foot in the door for the sport and Jim Asato, a star running back in the late 1940s and early ’50s and instructor on campus, agreed to oversee varsity football’s shoestring return as the coach. After a 6-2 season in 1962, things headed downhill again, eventually prompting Burns’ pivotal edict.

And, finally, in 1966 its first all-collegiate schedule.

UH’s aborted 1961 football schedule

Sept. 15 — at Pacific

Sept. 23 — at Brigham Young

Sept. 30 —at Washington State

Oct. 6 — at San Jose State

Oct. 20 — Cal State Los Angeles

Nov. 10 — Pepperdine

Nov. 25 — Fresno State

Dec. 1 — Arizona

Dec. 8 — Oklahoma

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