UH looking to Washington State or Alabama is probably in and Virginia is out on Hawaii's 2003 football schedule, UH athletic department officials said yesterday.
fill vacant spot in
2003 schedule
Hawaii works on finding
another football team to replace
Virginia, which has pulled outBy Dave Reardon
dreardon@starbulletin.comVirginia backed out of its Nov. 29, 2003, game with UH via a letter to athletic director Hugh Yoshida last month. Virginia had already postponed the game once.
Notre Dame, Texas, Purdue and Iowa State have also canceled games they had scheduled against Hawaii since 1999. Those games, and the one with Virginia, were all contracted several years ago.
Since last year, UH has included buyout clauses in its contracts with nonconference teams. Yoshida said there are three or four games left on Hawaii's future schedules that do not have such a clause.
"It's part of the landscape now," Yoshida said. "The recent success has had an impact on teams wanting to play us."
A Virginia athletic department official said the Cavaliers opted out of the game for several reasons.
"There was a new coach (Al Groh) and there's a new athletic director (Craig Littlepage), a lot of changes since that contract was signed four years ago," said Gerry Capone, associate athletic director for football administration. "Our schedule is extremely difficult and going out to Hawaii for a 12th game wouldn't help us."
UH associate athletic director Jim Donovan said the letter from Virginia indicated that Tulane was interested in replacing the Cavaliers. But a call from UH to Tulane was not returned, Donovan said.
Warriors coach June Jones expressed an interest in playing Alabama, and Yoshida followed up with inquiries.
Alabama might be able to fill the vacated 2003 spot, but only if the Crimson Tide remain ineligible for the SEC championship game scheduled for that weekend.
Alabama is on probation, disallowing it from postseason competition. But if Alabama wins an appeal to the NCAA and its probation is shortened to not include 2003, it would not be able to schedule UH, since it must be available to possibly play in the SEC title game.
It is possible, but unlikely, Hawaii could schedule Alabama for this season. The Warriors already have the maximum 13 games slated and UH would have to reschedule or buy its way out of a contract with one of its nonconference opponents. Alabama has open dates on Nov. 30 and Dec. 7, when Hawaii is slated to host Washington State and San Diego State.
Meanwhile, UH is negotiating for two more games with Washington State, one here, possibly in 2003, and one in Pullman in 2005.
"We've had some discussions and they've expressed interest verbally," Donovan said. "We might be able to write up a contract soon. But it's not a done deal yet.
"We've also had numerous discussions with Alabama, and they're very interested," he added.
In other UH athletic department news, the committee to find finalists to replace Yoshida, who is retiring, met yesterday. The group is still working on securing a search firm and updating the athletic director job description. The committee meets again April 30.
UH Athletics
