I understand that Hawaii is very much part of the USA and the U of H has every right to participate in collegiate sports, but Hawaii is so far away from all the mainland schools! (They can’t go over to the Big Island and play Hilo every week!)
Even from the west coast, its a grueling 5 and a half hour plane ride to say nothing of the hassle of getting to the airport, customs, baggage, etc. And this year the football team played at Louisiana Tech. Someone give me a flight time for that “road” game! There’s got to be some serious jet lag involved and then the team is supposed to play football at a reasonably high collegiate level? They are ranked 14th in the nation!
However it works the other way, too. Northern Colorado, Utah State, New Mexico State and Boise State all had to make the trip to Hawaii and you can bet it wasn’t a non-stop flight! Charleston Southern had it the worst though. Their football team had to fly all the way from South Carolina to Honolulu!
The rest of their schedule is with west coast teams, but I still don’t know how they do it. Heck they are 8-0!
But is it “fair” to ask teams to fly so far for a game?
(Oh yeah, don’t forget these are university students who are supposed to be getting an education.)
If it isn’t “fair”, then what’s the alternative? Do the Rainbows, or Rainbow Warriors or whatever they’re called now get spotted a couple of points for road games because of admitted travel hardships, lack of having to go through customs notwithstanding? Maybe they should petition to join the PAC-10.
According to the university’s website, several of the trips are multi-week affairs. For example, they fly from Honolulu to Houston, then base from there to hit Louisiana and Vegas. The western half of the mainland they round-trip from Hawai’i, spending a total of 50:38 hours in the air for the season.
With the addition of La. Tech to the WAC I think they really should consider it. But would the PAC-10 take them? Ideally we’d need another team to join with, Fresno or San Diego State maybe. Which would require the new PAC-12 to split in to two division of 6. I get the feeling they wouldn’t want us though. We’d really have to pay through the nose. It would be a good place for our volleyball teams though.
Probably the 16 team WAC from the 90s was the best we could hope for. Once that imploded we were screwed.
Well, a lot of college football players have relatively easy majors and a in addition they will take a light course load during the Fall semester (in schools which aren’t on the quarter system.)
Every major college football team will usually have a few players who have really tough majors and usually these types are big overachievers and have 3.5-4.0 GPAs. I imagine at Hawaii those guys get it done by making sure most of their harder courses are done in the Spring and Summer semesters while they take a lighter load in the fall. Worst case scenario is they take five years to graduate, which is (last I heard) now the national norm for graduating, and since most college football players get red shirted their first year they pretty much have to go five years if they want to use up all their eligibility (which most of them probably do since it will be the last time they ever play football at a major level.)
Our graduation rates are fairly poor for football. In fact only in tennis and baseball are we above average, and baseball just barely. I’d definitely respect them more if we had a better rate.
A New York Times story on the big road trip in September.
Quote from a Star-Bulletin article “It won’t be all X’s and O’s. There will certainly be a lot of Z’s on the Warriors’ direct, overnight commercial flight, and each seat has its own entertainment center that includes several movies and other programs, as well as games like chess and blackjack.”
Many major college football teams charter their own flights now. So the trips to and from Hawaii would be non-stop and comfortable. Whether UH does this, I don’t know, and I’m sure not all the teams on their schedule do it as a matter of course, but they may do so for the special trip.
Upon reading this thread title, I thought it was going to be people ripping UH’s schedule. Here’s something I posted earlier:
Hawaii, if it goes unbeaten, could be considered this years Boise State. Unfortunately, our schedule is terrible and could hurt our BCS chances. Think of this story when people criticize UH’s schedule during bowl selection time.
Mainland teams which travel to Hawaii for games have always been allowed to add an extra game to their schedule, which provides an incentive to make the trip. As a result, Hawaii plays more home than road games–according to the NYT story, 70 home games and only 36 road during the tenure of the current coach.
However, I see that this year’s schedule is more evenly balanced with seven at home and five on the road.
They’re the Warriors now. They dropped the Rainbow (and the accompanying logo) about 7 years ago, trading it for the green/white/black tapa print logo.
I’ll go out on a limb and speak for the Pac-10. Sure, we’ll take em. Gives us an excuse to go to Hawaii now and then. But we want UNR, too. I’d like to see my beloved Trojans in my neck of the woods every other year or so. Might be fun to see em play in the snow!