The checks are almost in the mail.

Beginning Saturday, colleges may begin meeting the landmark and long overdue NCAA legislation allowing scholarship athletes to receive so-called cost of attendance stipends that address expenses beyond room, board, books and tuition.

But before the University of Hawaii’s approximately 250 scholarship athletes start scouring their accounts for an influx of moolah, the key word here is “may.”

While athletic director David Matlin has pledged to offer some ground floor form of COA at UH, the question of how many of the school’s scholarship athletes will share in it — and to what extent — remains to be determined.

It could be mid-August before UH publicly rolls out its plan, Matlin said.

What we know for sure at this point is that football, as the chief bread winner in the 21-team department, will be in the forefront. Without a competitive football team the entire department takes a financial hit. And without at least some form of COA in answer to the schools and geography UH recruits against, good luck attracting the caliber of players it will take to be competitive.

COA “is the biggest issue in the Mountain West,” Nevada head coach Brian Polian said at MWC Media Day in Las Vegas this week. MWC schools that choose not to ante up for COA will “have no chance to compete,” he said.

He could have been talking about any mid-major conference without beaucoups TV bucks to shore it up.

“Not only can you not pluck a recruit away from a Power Five (school), you can’t compete in your own conference. You might as well be in the Big Sky,” Polian told reporters.

UH, which has enough hurdles already and can ill afford to fall any more off the pace, is determined to at least offer the beginnings of a COA package.

Of course, this is more than just a football issue. The way it works is that if 85 scholarship football players receive stipends at UH, then Rainbow Wahine scholarship recipients must be equivalently addressed.

The means of funding are as varied as the MWC institutions scrambling to confront them. San Diego State has said it is attaching a ticket surcharge to its most attractive sports. Colorado State will use the proceeds from Florida’s $7 million buyout of former Rams coach Jim McElwain’s contract. Utah State has gotten an appropriation from the state and San Jose State has received a “one-time” check from the university.

Lacking a coach’s contract to sell off (hmm, wonder what Dave Shoji is worth on the open market?) or seven-figure largess from the state or campus, UH has to look anywhere and everywhere. And whatever it does deign to fund will probably not fully reach the currently operative figure of $3,925 pegged by the school as its COA this year.

Matlin has told the UH Board of Regents that he has been looking at several entrepreneurial options and some potential donors have “stepped up” and expressed interest in possibly making “significant” contributions. “Angels,” Matlin has called them.

For UH, underwriting COA will, indeed, require some heaven-sent assistance.

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