State has bowl,
but will fans come?

A Hawaii Bowl without
UH could be a tough sell

Past results

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By Dave Reardon
dreardon@starbulletin.com

Now that Hawaii is host to a bowl game again, the question is how many people will give up Christmas at home to attend.

Judging from history, the quick answers are lots if the University of Hawaii is in the game, and probably not many if the Warriors are not. Around 35,000 attended the 1999 Oahu Bowl and close to the capacity 50,000 filled Aloha Stadium for the 1989 Aloha Bowl, both of which UH played in.

While the Aloha Bowl did well enough until recent years to stay afloat even without UH's participation, attendance dwindled, forcing it and the Oahu Bowl to look for new homes. Around 9,500 attended the last Christmas Day bowl game in Hawaii in 2000, when Boston College beat Arizona State. The turnstile count for the two games combined in 2000 was a mere 18,584.

The Hawaii Bowl, which the NCAA certified yesterday, guarantees that a bowl-eligible UH team won't be left out in the cold, as the 9-3 Warriors were last season.

But it also leaves the potential for a matchup lacking drawing power if UH doesn't qualify, as the Western Athletic Conference and Conference USA supply the teams for the Hawaii Bowl. Neither has teams with a national following (except Army), nor fans who are known to travel.

Conference USA now has five bowl tie-ins, and the WAC has three. So, if UH is out, a 7-5 Louisiana Tech team could play a 6-6 Tulane. That might sell on the bayou, but it's unlikely to fill Aloha Stadium.

It all rests on the magic number of seven, the minimum wins UH must get in this fall's 13-game schedule in order to become bowl eligible.

Looking at it the other way, if the Warriors have a miracle season and end up in BCS contention, they have an out clause in their Hawaii Bowl contract, athletic director Hugh Yoshida said. Also, UH is only contracted with the game for the first two seasons of the four-year deal.

All those involved stress the Hawaii Bowl is not the University of Hawaii Bowl.

UH coach June Jones said the most important thing is that his team won't have to go through another successful year with no postseason reward.

"I just think it's a positive for us," Jones said. "It doesn't matter who we play, we won't have the same kind of situation like we did at the end of last year. This is very positive. It's another national exposure for our whole state."

Associate athletic director Jim Donovan said since the game will start in the early afternoon it won't interfere with most people's holiday celebrations. He added the game could be an exposure and financial boon for UH and the state.

"There will be beautiful shots of Hawaii during prime time. For our program, potential recruits will see the game, and our own seniors who have aspirations to go to the next level will be seen by pro scouts," Donovan said. "Using the 1999 Oahu Bowl as an example, we netted a quarter of a million dollars on the game. Essentially, that's what we'd pay for a charter flight to the mainland, so we're looking at breaking even, or not making money on a mainland bowl unless it's very high paying. We stand a chance to have a net profit here."

The minimum per-team payout for the Hawaii Bowl will be $750,000.

Television, as it is increasingly so, is the key. ESPN's ownership of the Hawaii Bowl is a major component of the event's chances for success. Ironically, the main reason the game is a major risk at the gate -- its Christmas Day scheduling -- is also what makes it attractive to the network.

"Ratings are tremendous on Christmas," said Marcia Cherner, former president of the Aloha Bowl. "If you could feel good about 30,000 (in attendance), which is what we usually had, you could do OK.

"We think it's great there's a game back in Hawaii. It was certainly successful here during our tenure. Hawaii has owned Christmas Day."

Cherner said she and her husband, Lenny Klompus, sold the Aloha and Oahu bowls after the 1999 games for several reasons, some of them personal, some of them business.

"The landscape of college football has changed dramatically," Cherner said. "Having No. 4 in one conference playing No. 6 in another has changed the dynamics dramatically. The other part is sponsorships. When games like the Rose, Citrus and Holiday Bowls lose theirs, it makes it harder for all the bowls.

"But there's more upside than down," she added. "One thing we do know is it can be successful here."

The NCAA did not re-certify the Aloha Bowl yesterday (it also did not give the go-ahead to Global Event Management, which also proposed a Christmas Day game here). The Aloha Bowl's current owners, Terry Daw and Fritz Rohlfing, hoped to stage a matchup of teams from the ACC and the Mountain West on Dec. 28. Daw said the group also approached UH about participation.

"We hope the Hawaii Bowl is successful. But what Aloha Sports, Inc., was trying to do is bring a game to Hawaii where fans still enjoy their Christmas and still have a great college football bowl tradition, for the long term," Daw said. "We made a proposal to the University of Hawaii and the WAC. We feel it would have been in the best interest of Hawaii and the WAC to have the game on the 28th."

Yoshida said UH considered the proposal, but things were already progressing with ESPN and the conferences.

"It's too bad we couldn't work things out," Yoshida said. "When they made the offer we had ongoing discussions (with ESPN) and we never had a meeting of the minds (with the Aloha Bowl group). A lot of it was timing."

Although Yoshida and Jones initially balked at demands placed on UH by ESPN last year -- like changing the Fresno State game from Saturday to Friday for the network -- both later agreed that the nationwide exposure helped the program.

"It was a very timely thing for us that ESPN came on board and worked with our conference," Yoshida said. "The frustrations we went through last year really made people realize we needed to look for opportunities to showcase Hawaii and the university. We're looking forward to the partnership. I know it will work for us."

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Hawaii bowl results Aloha Bowl unless otherwise noted 2000: Boston College 31, Arizona St. 17 2000: Georgia 37, Virginia 14 (Oahu Bowl) 1999: Wake Forest 23, Arizona St. 3 1999: Hawaii 23, Oregon St. 17 (Oahu Bowl) 1998: Colorado 51, Oregon 43 1997: Washington 51, Michigan St. 23 1996: Navy 42, California 38 1995: Kansas 51, UCLA 30 1994: Boston College 12, Kansas St. 7 1993: Colorado 41, Fresno St. 30 1992: Kansas 23, Brigham Young 20 1991: Georgia Tech 18, Stanford 17 1990: Syracuse 28, Arizona 0 1989: Michigan St. 33, Hawaii 13 1988: Washington St. 24, Houston 22 1987: UCLA 20, Florida 16 1986: Arizona 30, North Carolina 21 1985: Alabama 24, Southern California 3 1984: SMU 27, Notre Dame 20 1983: Penn St. 13, Washington 10 1982: Washington 21, Maryland 20