Sidelines
HERE it comes, right on time. With seven wins, the mark of a winning and successful season for the Hawaii football team, here comes the cry and lament at the loss of the Aloha and Oahu bowls. No Aloha Bowl means bowls
mean more nowIf only the Christmas Day bonanza were still here, the complaint goes, UH would have a bowl spot guaranteed. A seat at the table set aside. The hometown bowl would have to automatically take Hawaii. A wink and a handshake, and it would all be a done deal, UH in the postseason again.
If only, if only. Oh woe, oh woe. Auwe, auwe.
Allow me to disagree here.
The Aloha Bowl? I'll miss it, remembering the Washingtons and Alabamas and Penn States and UCLAs that used to come. But I don't think a team should be picking up its bowl bids at the will-call window.
A guaranteed spot? In your own stadium? Just another home game at Aloha Stadium?
That kind of defeats the purpose of a bowl bid.
Now, June Jones, his guys, the UH administration, the Western Athletic Conference, and possibly most of you, will say Hawaii in the Aloha Bowl would be a perfect fit. Bowl game. Home game. Money, exposure, fun for all.
That's fine. Jones and company will take a bowl game any way they can get one. The guys who played in 1999 will say it felt just as good. And who can blame them?
But if you're a fan, as a college football fan and as a UH fan, doesn't that cheapen the whole thing?
Does it mean as much if it's set aside for you? If its purpose is to give you a place to go? If it turns into the Rainbow Invitational?
Wouldn't it be better, mean more, to qualify for an outside, independent, "real" bowl bid? (Even if it's called something like the "Weedeater Classic"?)
The first time, UH's first bowl, great. It was perfect. They had to break the ice. They had to go somewhere, and the Aloha Bowl served that purpose. The second time, coming out of the dark ages, that was cool, too. After 0-12, you take anything you can get, and again it was perfect. It was a great capper to a comeback season.
But no more. That's it. The hometown exemptions have been used up. UH should not have standing reservations at the Aloha Bowl every year. Not if it wants to be taken seriously as a top 25 contender.
In my former life as a fan (the kid who ran around the yard pretending to be Gary Allen), it was the 1992 Holiday Bowl that really meant something. That was an accomplishment, a point of pride. The Aloha Bowl was nice. But on the same level? Not even close. No. Not even close.
Of course, the sad fact is, that if there is no Aloha Bowl and no hometown bowl bid, UH probably isn't going anywhere, not most years. Not 1980 or 1981, wonderful as those teams were. Not 1988. Not now.
Fine. You have to win the conference. You have to go undefeated. That's a reality of life if you're in the middle of the Pacific. Bowl games don't come so easily here. They're harder to earn. They're bigger. They mean more.
They should. Now, without the Aloha Bowl, they do again.
Kalani Simpson's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
He can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com