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Aloha means goodbye?

Damn. Hawaii is already an anomaly for an athletic program in the structure of all of their travel being so far out from the mainland universities. I worry that football at the youth and prep levels will suffer if there is no college football being played in the islands.
 
They need to drop football.

It's been an issue for a while. It's just so damn expensive to try to be a D1A football program in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Mileage-wise, Denver is closer to Miami than Honolulu is to Los Angeles.
 
The rainbow's jersey is just straight sick.

I see what you did there.

Love the nod to the old blending with the new. Nothing for a college football traditonalist, but to me it sums up perfectly the WAC of the 80s and 90s. Loud like the offenses these teams directed in shootouts on ESPN2 while most of the country was asleep.
 
Maybe I'm nostagic, but against all odds if the Pac went to 16 It'd be nice offer a golden ticket to Hawai'i. I've got a soft spot for the 'bows but it makes no economical sense though.
 
Those are some of my favorite uni's in college football.

I would be very sad to see the Rainbow Warriors go, but trying to fund a team that is 2,500 miles from it's nearest competitor is just unrealistic in the new college football format.


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Maybe I'm nostagic, but against all odds if the Pac went to 16 It'd be nice offer a golden ticket to Hawai'i. I've got a soft spot for the 'bows but it makes no economical sense though.
+1

You're right; it makes absolutely no sense from a revenue sharing/distribution/cost standpoint, but I too would rather see the Rainbow Warriors than [strike]many[/strike] most of the other teams bandied about for potential conference expansion (e.g. Texas, Houston, Okie Lite, UNM, Boise, Nevada, etc).

Now that I really think about it, on a non-economic basis, I think the only expansion candidates that I would rate higher than them are OU and maybe KU. Yes, they would decrease the revenue payout to each school because they don't increase the size of the pot. Yes, they add a lot of extra expense to every schools' and sports' budgets. Sentiment don't care about those things.

Sentiment also don't care about academics, on which Hawaii unfortunately really, really sucks - like KSU level of sucktitude.
 
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Not surprising at all. We may have a few holes in our schedule the next couple years.
 
Maybe I'm nostagic, but against all odds if the Pac went to 16 It'd be nice offer a golden ticket to Hawai'i. I've got a soft spot for the 'bows but it makes no economical sense though.

You're not thinking big enough. Hawaii could be the gateway to the Asian Market.


Kidding. Sort of.
 
UH has the Hawaiian time zone all to themselves. They'd make it easy to schedule those 2:00 AM east coast games.
 
I am obvoiusly biased, but I do dream of Hawaii joining the Pac-12 (or 16+) even though I know that is never going to happen. Larry Scott is too smart (unless he comes up with a geniously creative solution to make it profitable) to take the financial sacrifice, the fan base is stong in the islands but the population too small, and the AD of Hawaii is worse than Colorado's EVER was.

This is going to have a really strange negative impact on the islands, who have always felt like UH was their only "pro" team. I don't know how they can fill that void.
 
On another hypothetical note, I wonder if after the Big 5 conferences take over football and dissolve the other schools' programs, that a semi pro league develops in some of the abandoned areas. It could work for players out of high school who don't want to deal with college and allow them to develop and get paid while preparing to enter the NFL.

I am sure that has been discussed, but I have never personally thought about it. I could imagine them scattered across the country, even in quasi smaller markets like Hawaii, North Dakota, Nevada, etc.
 
On another hypothetical note, I wonder if after the Big 5 conferences take over football and dissolve the other schools' programs, that a semi pro league develops in some of the abandoned areas. It could work for players out of high school who don't want to deal with college and allow them to develop and get paid while preparing to enter the NFL.

I am sure that has been discussed, but I have never personally thought about it. I could imagine them scattered across the country, even in quasi smaller markets like Hawaii, North Dakota, Nevada, etc.

That's basically what the P5 becomes, no? Who's going to pay semi pro players in South Dakota?
 
If the P5 schools do their own thing, it might really make sense for the other conferences to look at reducing scholarships from 85 to something like 65 or 70.
 
That's basically what the P5 becomes, no? Who's going to pay semi pro players in South Dakota?

:nod:

Most everyone else is going to realize that the money's not there and run things like 1-AA for football to contain costs there while fielding top level D1 in other sports (the Villanova model).

After football is settled, though, the big question becomes basketball. For 2013-14, we had 351 D1 teams. In 1985 when the tournament expanded to 64 teams, there were only 272 teams (if my math is right). That's about 80 programs coming in to get a piece of the pie. It's too much. The 1985 D1 was the right size for basketball... the post-season tournament takes the top 25% for the Dance and there aren't any of these stupid play-in games. There are about 8 conferences that can be eliminated from D1 and no one on the national level would miss them.
 
My old man played for the 'Bows back in the late 60's early 70's so I have a soft spot for them as well. Their football program has always had that small time feel to me however. Similar to a Portland St. Is it the travel cost that are burying them or the lack of TV revenues?
 
That's basically what the P5 becomes, no? Who's going to pay semi pro players in South Dakota?

They might only be paid between $25-40k per year. The benefit is they can focus 100% on football, and hope to make it into the NFL after a couple/few years.

It would give some of these communities that are missing a college team something to root for. Maybe it could even be connected to an NFL team just like they do it for baseball teams.

I don't know, I'm sure if this kind of thing was viable it would already exist.
 
They might only be paid between $25-40k per year. The benefit is they can focus 100% on football, and hope to make it into the NFL after a couple/few years.

It would give some of these communities that are missing a college team something to root for. Maybe it could even be connected to an NFL team just like they do it for baseball teams.

I don't know, I'm sure if this kind of thing was viable it would already exist.

We already have that, it's called the CFL.
 
With the ongoing issue of concussions and health care post football, minor league football is looking less and less attractive.
 
They might only be paid between $25-40k per year. The benefit is they can focus 100% on football, and hope to make it into the NFL after a couple/few years.

It would give some of these communities that are missing a college team something to root for. Maybe it could even be connected to an NFL team just like they do it for baseball teams.

I don't know, I'm sure if this kind of thing was viable it would already exist.

On the one hand: Earn $25k-$40k per year. Pray you make the NFL, because otherwise you're a guy with a high school diploma and nothing worthwhile on your resume that will ever lead to a job making more than $25-$40k per year the rest of your life.

On the other hand, earn:

1. $1k per month as a cost-of-living stipend while getting your meals and housing paid for
2. Get a free college degree (maybe even a free graduate degree)
3. Get access to the highest sub-NFL level coaching, competition and training
4. Get media exposure that's somewhere between MLB and NHL players

Semi-pro ain't gonna happen. In fact, I think it's going the other way. MLB would rather have its players developed in college and have fewer levels of minor league baseball. Why do they need more than a team each for AAA and AA with deals to supply players to Latin America for Winter League?
 
As the 50th state to join the union, Hawaii is the noob. The US flag added that last star only 55 years ago. Following WWII and the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian soil was American soil. Servicemen and women who had a tour in paradise will forever hold Hawaii near and dear to their hearts.

A post-war tourism boom brought big resorts to Waikiki and across the other islands. Movies and TV shows featuring Elvis, Magnum, and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park made Hawaii a glamorous and accessible piece of the good old USA.

Of all uniquely mainland institutions to hit the shores of Hawaii, football has been one of the most adored and adopted. The Hawaiian football pipeline is rich and diverse. Marcus Mariota, Manti Te'o, Jordan Dizon, Chris Fuamuatu-Ma'afala, Norm Chow, Brian Cabral, and many other football players and coaches got their first taste of football on the islands.

College football is part of the cultural glue that binds Hawaii to the mainland. This has been the case since 1909, when the first U of Hawaii took the field.

It's sad to see such an important institution of college football struggle for existence after over a century of history.

Should Hawaii lose it's college football program, then there is one less bond between Hawaiian and mainlander. There will be one less avenue for Hawaiian players, their parents, and their fans to travel to the lower 48 and take part in the traditions and pageantry of college football.

Without the Warriors, new generations of players from Punahou, St Louis, or other football factories have one less option. Their dreams to play college ball grow more distant, as does their connection with the rest of the USA.

I know that college football is all about money. The cultural benefit just doesn't matter in the big bad world of TV contracts.

That's a bummer.
 
The thing is, Hawaii could actually make a ton of money by hosting neutral site games and then cash in with 2 or more bowl games.

They might even be able to get a neutral site game every week of the season. I would bet that the Pac-12 would do a neutral there every single week.

I know I'd vote "yes" on a setup that gave the Buffs 4 home games / 4 road games / 1 neutral site game in Hawaii every single season for our Pac-12 schedule.

That's how the Pac-12 should cash in on that market and expand its brand West into the Pacific Islands and Asia. Not by adding the University of Hawaii.
 
For those of you who have ties to the islands.

Could Hawaii make a go of FCS level football. You reduce the number of scholarships, you cut the cost of coaches, you travel much smaller teams and the expectations in terms of level of service go down. Would they be able to draw enough fans considering the lack of pro sports competition to make it worth bringing teams over.

I could see them schedule road trips to include 2 or even 3 games on a single trip (they have already done this at the FBS level.)

It would be a shame for college football to disappear from Hawaii but at this point the cost of maintaining a FBS program isn't justified by the financial support they manage to generate.
 
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