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Imagine the University of Hawaii football team playing host to a Pac-12 team before a capacity crowd of 35,500.
What’s more, as the home team, the Rainbow Warriors would collect the gate receipts and control the television rights, allowing play-by-play announcer Kanoa Leahey and color analyst Rich Miano to call the games.
No, this vision would not involve the pie-in-the-sky new stadium in Halawa. That project is somewhere behind the completed work of the rail and Pali Highway.
But a longtime UH employee who recently retired suggested the Warriors play big-name opponents at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas.
It would be a proven draw for UH fans from Hawaii and the mainland, more convenient travel for the visiting team, and, well, less embarrassing for all.
UH athletic director David Matlin has done an admirable job in leading the retrofitting of Ching Complex into a workable home site for Warriors football games. When UH officials learned in December 2020 that Aloha Stadium would be shuttered for spectator events because of safety issues, Matlin and his staff worked with contractors locally, nationally and internationally to install stands, coaches’ booths and luxury boxes. Ching was retrofitted so quickly — and efficiently — that some state senators called a hearing to determine how the heck that happened.
But Ching is beautiful in the same way as your kid’s art project is refrigerator-door worthy. For a transitional facility — while factoring time and financial constraints — Ching is workable. After all, Ching used to be Cooke Field, where in the early to mid 2000s the artificial surface eroded away to the point feral cats used it as a 100-yard litter box.
But as a host site for games against Power 5 programs, Ching just is not good enough. There are not enough seats. There are not enough restrooms. And the visiting team’s locker room partially involves the cordoned concourse at Les Murakami Stadium.
Last year, Ching had a seating capacity of 9,000. While the hope was to double capacity for this coming season, the likelihood is just 1,000 seats will be added. For now.
A practical plan, according to the former UH employee, would be to shift the Warriors’ marquee games to Las Vegas. It would be too late for this season. But the UH-Stanford game, scheduled for 2023 in Manoa, could be an option. And UH should give the proposal consideration for the 2024 season, when Oregon and UCLA are scheduled to visit.
UNLV plays its home games at Allegiant Stadium, leaving Sam Boyd Stadium available.
Previously known as Las Vegas Stadium and the Silver Bowl, the 52-year-old Sam Boyd Stadium was UNLV’s home venue until Allegiant was completed in 2020. Sam Boyd Stadium was not used in 2020 because of the pandemic. Most recently, it served as a COVID-19 testing site.
Sam Boyd Stadium would need some sprucing before it could be used for football again. But those fixer-upper costs are relatively minimal.
There also is an agreement that the stadium could not be used for UNLV-related events. That pact should not be an obstacle for a Warriors-hosted game, even though UH and UNLV are members of the Mountain West Conference, and Las Vegas often is billed as the “Ninth Island.”
In odd-numbered years, the Warriors play road games against UNLV and Nevada. The UNLV games draw thousands of UH fans to the desert city. Those games are played in Hawaii in even-numbered years. A game against Oregon, UCLA or both in 2024 would, no doubt, be appealing to Hawaii fans.
While UH supporters wait … and wait … and wait … for the Halawa dream to be fulfilled, the Warriors might want to bet on Vegas as another option.
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