Hawaii's One Win From Crashing BCS Party
Of all the upsets this season has produced, from Appalachian State over Michigan on September 1 to Arkansas over LSU on Friday, the greatest surprise of all may be that we are just two games away from a relatively controversy-free Bowl Championship Series.
Should the newly minted nos. 1 and 2 teams — Missouri and West Virginia, respectively — win their final games, they will meet for the national title in New Orleans on January 7. The only real dissent would come from Ohio State, as the Buckeyes would have been denied a spot despite having the same record as the Mountaineers and Tigers. But while Ohio State lost its penultimate game, Missouri and West Virginia would each enter on seven-game winning streaks.
Of course, both Missouri and West Virginia could lose next week, sending the BCS into complete chaos, as a team that didn't win its conference would likely be matched against Ohio State for the championship.
In yet another bit of controversy-avoidance, it looks as if the BCS bowls will be forced to include the nation's only undefeated team, Hawaii, provided the Warriors can knock off Washington at home next week. Hawaii's win over Boise State Friday night, in what was billed as the biggest game in Western Athletic Conference history, was enough to move the Warriors to no. 12 in the latest BCS standings — the spot at which a BCS atlarge invite is guaranteed.
It's a good thing for Hawaii that the guarantee exists, otherwise there's little chance the Warriors would be included. Beyond creating a championship game between the top two teams every year, the BCS was created by the major conferences to help them fashion attractive bowl match-ups — for both ticket sales and TV ratings — as well as keep most of the lucrative BCS bowl money in the hands of those leagues. Only twice has a school from outside the six BCS conferences been included: Utah in 2004 and Boise State last year. That both brought plenty of fans to the games (in both cases, the Fiesta Bowl) and both won does little to boost Hawaii's appeal.
With the Sugar Bowl their most likely destination, game officials in New Orleans can't be too thrilled at the prospect of selling tickets to Hawaii fans who would face roughly a 4,500-mile trip to the game. While Boise State was able to bring plenty of fans south to Glendale, Ariz., for the Fiesta Bowl last season, the prospect of inviting Hawaii to New Orleans is like a dinner check that nobody wants to pick up.
Yet WAC commissioner Karl Benson is confident that Hawaii could represent itself just fine.
"Hawaii has historically had a great fan following when they play on the mainland," Benson said. "This year when they played UNLV in Las Vegas, they had 12-15,000 fans there and maybe only 2,000 made the trip from the state of Hawaii."
There's another reason for Hawaii's appeal, Benson said, and it has to do with the "cult of Colt," as in Brennan, the Warriors' record-setting quarterback.
"Colt Brennan is a cult figure," Benson said. "It would be easy for fans to adopt Hawaii for the day. Put on an aloha shirt and go to the Superdome and root for the underdog."
Benson has been down this road before, sweating out Boise State's BCS rank last season, although the Broncos removed much of the drama by reaching no. 12 by mid-November and moving steadily upward.
Whether or not the Warriors can complete their undefeated season and reach the BCS, the program's turnaround over the past nine years under coach June Jones is remarkable. When Fred von Appen was fired following an 0–12 campaign in 1998, the possibility of the school dropping football altogether was not out of the question. Enter Jones, a former Hawaii quarterback and NFL head coach. His runand-shoot offense propelled Hawaii to a 9–4 record in 1999, the single-biggest one-season turnaround in NCAA history.
Though Jones has largely maintained that level of success (just two losing seasons in nine years), the economics of Hawaii football remain a challenge. Finances have threatened the program before; the school dropped the sport in 1961, only to revive it a year later.
The NCAA tries to help ease the burden by granting a "Hawaii exemption" — teams traveling to the islands are allowed to schedule an extra game to help defray the cost, likewise giving Hawaii an extra gate opportunity. Yet even that doesn't always help. Athletic director Herm Frazier struggled to finalized this year's 12-game schedule (one less than the permissible maximum) until earlier this year. He ended up having to grant home dates to a pair of Division I-AA opponents after other schools backed out of commitments. ESPN even tried to broker a game with Michigan in Ann Arbor, but in a bit of irony, the Wolverines opted for a game with Appalachian State.
The resulting soft slate, which ranks near the bottom of NCAA's strength-of-schedule metrics, is the prime evidence cited by those who feel Hawaii doesn't merit BCS inclusion even at 12-0. According to BCS expert Jerry Palm, it no longer matters. On his Web site Sunday, Palm said Hawaii is a virtual certainty for the BCS if it wins next week.
That will come as welcome news to Benson, who has taken the high road even as the BCS announced a tweak last week that seemed directly aimed at keeping Hawaii out. Asked how he would react if undefeated and BCS-eligible Hawaii was denied an invite, he opted for an approach rarely employed by the team's ultra-aggressive coach: he punted. "You'll have to ask me about that on December 2nd," he said, indicating the date BCS bids are handed out.
Mr. Levine is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.
