The University of Hawai’i football team is getting killed in the media this week. Apparently, nobody learned from last year’s Boise State lesson. As you’ll read, Hawai’i doesn’t deserve to play for the title, or even be in a BCS game because of their weak schedule. What nobody cares about is the fact that there isn’t much Hawai’i can do about it.

For starters, the cost of Hawai’i taking road trips far exceeds every other team in the country. It’s not like they can just request a road game to Ohio State and it will happen. They had back-to-back road games this year, and they never went back to the islands. They went to Louisiana Tech (a 10-hour journey) and then went back to Houston to spend the week preparing for UNLV the next week.

And at the same time, nobody wants to go to Hawai’i. The expenses are ridiculous, and there is no harder trip in the country for a coach to keep his players focused. Not to mention that Hawai’i is a good football team that plays a style most coaches don’t want to prepare for. Hawai’i has shown in the past that they are willing to play anyone. Last season they beat Purdue and Arizona State. This year they beat Boise State and Washington. And in year’s past they have shown the willingness to play Alabama, USC, Wisconsin and others.

Give Hawai’i a break. Every road trip the take is over five hours by plane. Going to Hawai’i is the toughest road trip in the country for any team to take. Every game they play, somebody is pretty much losing money. If they have to travel, the travel expenses often outweigh the money they make, and vice versa for teams coming to Hawai’i. As a school, Hawai’i is not in the financial situation of the Ohio State’s and Georgia’s of the football world. Their facilities have been called embarrassing. To hold them to the same standard is unfair. Put any of these other schools in Hawai’i’s situation and they’ll sing a different song. Not being able to afford a major road trip doesn’t mean you don’t have a good football team.

This season, Hawai’i was supposed to play Michigan State. Michigan State cancelled, leaving Hawai’i with a date they could only fill with a Division I-AA opponent. Next year, Hawai’i goes to Florida. They also have scheduled Oregon State, Washington State and Cincinnati. Don’t be surprised if all of those teams aren’t on Hawai’i’s schedule come August, through no fault of their own. But they will have no Colt Brennan, and if they struggle, all you’ll hear is how they were overrated this year.

The problem with Hawai’i is that they have a hard time making a schedule that is acceptable to all of the SEC hog-sucking folks out there. You can only punish a team so much for their opposition. When 116 out of 119 teams in the country have at least two losses, an there is only one undefeated team, they deserve to be taken seriously. You would think that people learned a little lesson last year from Boise State. The WAC knows how to play football, and if Georgia starts reading the newspaper, they might be in for a big surprise.

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