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There is a definite pecking order to college football, and some of it extends to the announcing of schedules, which is why the Southeastern Conference unveils its slate in January and the Mountain West Conference comes out with its …
Well, any day now in March.
Since college football is built around TV and the SEC is the biggest show going, the dominoes and programming slots begin with the SEC and everybody else takes a place in line and waits their turn.
Which means the puff of white smoke that contains the conference schedules for the University of Hawaii and its 11 peers should be emerging from the chimney of MWC headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., any moment.
We already know the “who” the Warriors will be scheduled to play, though is it too much to hope that UH has been at work behind the scenes and successfully, somehow, to replace one of its games with new scheduling buddy New Mexico State?
That’s right, “one” of what has been scheduled to be a rare pair against the Aggies in the space of 29 days, Sept. 25 in Las Cruces, N.M., and Oct. 23 on campus at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletic Complex, permits and construction willing.
We’ll be seeing plenty of the Aggies with five games scheduled over a period of four seasons (2021-24). It would have been six in five seasons had COVID-19 not scratched the planned 2020 meeting.
Home-and-home series against the same team in the same season aren’t unheard of, but they are definitely few and far between. UConn and UMass in 1998 and Liberty and New Mexico in 2018 and ‘19 come to mind.
They are couplings of necessity, if not desperation. In UH’s case several years ago there were a
remarkable amount of pieces moving on the scheduling board as
the Warriors sought to
accommodate the change orders of some of their opponents while also trying to work in a $1.9 million guaranteed game for themselves at Michigan for 2022.
All the while UH was attempting to avoid a dreaded record eight road games in 2021. And New Mexico State, an independent after being bounced from the Sun Belt Conference, was ready, willing and available.
The cancellation of two games against Army in separate years and one with Wisconsin were casualties while the scheduling of two with New Mexico State were what UH was left with when all the dust cleared.
The result is that, barring an 11th hour shakeup, three of UH’s first four or five games (depending on open dates) in 2021 figure to be road trips to UCLA (Aug. 28), Oregon State (Sept. 11) and New Mexico State (Sept. 25).
As for the Mountain West Conference portion of the schedule, the “when” is the interesting part. Especially for UH, which cherishes well-placed open dates more than most because of the long haul nature of its road games and what figures to be seven trips to the continent in 2021.
After the on-, off- and on-again schedule of a 2020 induced by the pandemic, there is hope that, COVID-19 variants willing, teams might actually get to play something resembling a normal 12- to 13-game schedule this year.
And, if you are UH, amid all the drama of a crumbling 46-year-old Aloha Stadium, there is the fervent, fingers-crossed wish that the Rainbow Warriors will have a place to call home and cement that budding rivalry with New Mexico State.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
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