HONOLULU — We can all agree this is not the best of times for University of Hawaii football.
But if you are a sports fan in general, the beginning of November gives you lots of options over the 2-7 Rainbow Warriors, who appear to be on their way to 2-11—or 3-10 if they’re fortunate Saturday at Reno.
This is when the traditional big four team sport pro leagues intersect : You might dislike baseball in November, but when the World Series games are in Arizona and Texas weather isn’t much of a problem—especially since the Diamondbacks and Rangers play in stadiums with retractable roofs.
Also, the NFL is in full swing, and the NBA and NHL started up recently. You’ve also got Premier League Soccer and MLS.
Speaking of soccer, UH just finished one of its better seasons. And Wahine volleyball is on a five-match winning streak.
Prep football is on the verge of state tournaments. It’s great that there are plans to play the Open Division championship at the Ching Complex, and there’s a good chance for a sellout. It was terrible scheduling, though, by the Oahu Interscholastic Association to have its semifinals played at the same time as UH football’s homecoming game Saturday.
Yeah, you can be a wise guy and say that it did fans who chose one of the prep games a favor since they now don’t have to try to un-see Hawaii’s 35-0 loss to San Jose State. But scheduling like that should be a no-go in the future—as should the ridiculous “blended ” regular-season slates that resulted in mismatches as bad as or worse than those before classification. The OIA can never seem to do the right thing when it comes to scheduling football.
But I like to remain optimistic, and based on precedent there’s hope for return to a sane schedule. A few years ago there was something in place that made sense. Times and conditions change. But if it happened before, it can happen again.
That’s the way I look at UH football, too. Every program goes through peaks and valleys, but Warriors football seems to have experienced more than its share.
Whenever Hawaii football hits a low point, it’s accompanied by a chorus calling for a move to a lower division or shutting down of the team altogether. Those who advocate for the former often don’t realize that if you do that it doesn’t help financially and is likely to cause the demise of non-revenue sports teams. As for the latter, it happened twice.
Maybe 1942-45 doesn’t count because it was WWII. But it happened again, in 1961, after three losing seasons in a row before UH was even playing an all-college schedule. It was a brief break, and the program was restarted in 1962.
This is the third time in the past 25 years that the shut-it-down folks have felt enough strength in numbers to write signed letters to the editor instead of just troll anonymously online.
If that gives you anxiety, it’s good to remember that the first two times the Warriors bounced back, without having to put the program on pause, like in ‘61.
Both rebounds were keyed by coaching changes.
First was the famous worst-to-first turnaround when Fred vonAppen was relieved of duty after an 0-12 record in 1998 (and 5-31 in three years ). The next season, June Jones led many of the same players to 9-4, including a share of the WAC championship and an Oahu Bowl win.
The more recent time was about 10 years ago when Norm Chow averaged less than three wins a year in four seasons. His replacement, Nick Rolovich, wasn’t an instant winner, but his first team was 7-7 and the Warriors won 28 games in four seasons, including 10 in 2019 that culminated with a victory over BYU in the Hawaii Bowl. When Rolo left, it was of his choosing, to move up to a bigger job at Washington State.
That’s when the first huge mistake was made. UH could have elevated either co-offensive coordinator—Brian Smith or Craig Stutzmann—and had a very good chance to keep the momentum going. Instead, enter Todd Graham.
Then, when Graham didn’t work out, Jones offered his services for free, as a placeholder. He would mentor a successor like Smith, Stutzmann or Rich Miano—or the guy who eventually did get the job, Timmy Chang. But instead of after two years of learning from Jones, Chang returned to his alma mater as a first-time head coach immediately after Graham’s two years of mediocrity not worth the dysfunction accompanying it. That toxicity is why many of UH’s best players left, including one who was at quarterback for the other team Saturday.
Everyone knows you’re not supposed to try to fix what isn’t broken. If you do, you’re more likely to break it than improve it.
And that’s how UH got to where it is now. It’s familiar territory. This time, though, the bounce-back is going to be more challenging, because of the elephant in the room—no real stadium worthy of a Division I program until at least 2028.
You know that’s one of the first things any potential future Warrior asks about these days.
