A couple of the state’s enduring holiday season sports fixtures have already moved on and, now, we await the growing possibility of the Diamond Head Classic shortly joining them.

In a matter of weeks the Maui Invitational moved to Asheville, N.C., of all places, the SoFi Hawaii Bowl has announced it is taking a COVID-19 impacted hiatus and the expectation is that if the Diamond Head Classic, slated for Dec. 22, 23 and 25, is played at all this year it will be in an ESPN-encased bubble in Orlando, Fla.

An ESPN official declined comment on the event’s possible 2020 fate but suggested an announcement on several of its properties will be made soon.

If the Diamond Head is displaced, the irony here is that the state that made holiday college basketball tournaments a mainstay of the sporting calendar would be bereft of one for the first time in 57 years.

The novel concept was popularized by then University of Hawaii basketball coach Red Rocha and 14th Naval District athletic director Chuck Leahey in 1964.

It was not, as some have since imagined, envisioned as a launching pad for broadcasting careers of three generations of Leaheys (Chuck, Jim and Kanoa) but as a way for the growing UH program to bring in collegiate competition for itself and military teams in what was becoming the Vietnam era.

Initially, the Navy put up visiting players in barracks at Pearl Harbor, where they took advantage of 50-cent vending machine beers, while the coaches stayed in Waikiki hotels. Since the event was hosted by UH, an exemption allowed participating teams to play games above the normal NCAA limit and everybody was happy.

In short order the Rainbow Classic became a coveted invitation for top teams and a stage for Pete Maravich, Elvin Hayes, Michael Jordan, Bobby Hurley and Isiah Thomas, among others.

It was so successful that other schools and locations pressured the NCAA to expand the exemption opportunities from Alaska to Puerto Rico and the Rainbow Classic eventually lost its luster.

It ended up taking a back seat to the Thanksgiving week Maui Invitational, owned by KemperLesnik of Chicago.

The Rainbow, shunted off to become an early November tip-off event, was finally replaced in the Christmas period slot by the ESPN- owned and operated Diamond Head Classic in 2009. The trade-off for UH was that ESPN picked up the travel costs for the visiting teams, kept a spot open for the Rainbow Warriors, paid UH a rental fee and let the school keep concessions and parking revenues.

These days the pandemic has everybody looking at their health, both physical and financial. The distance that made a Hawaii trip an attraction for holiday tournament-bound teams now is seen as an unnecessary risk if there is a bubble alternative closer to home.

And even ESPN, operator of eight tournaments between Thanksgiving and Christmas that may be without ticket-buying fans, is feeling a squeeze from Disney corporate headquarters to trim expenses. One way of doing that is to bundle several tournaments into its Disney World Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando.

A Maui Invitational in North Carolina, a Diamond Head Classic in Florida and no major holiday tournament in Hawaii? Even in a pandemic that seems a reach.