Dave Brown runs a match-making service that produces high-profile, often multi-million-dollar marriages.

But it isn’t likely you’ll never see it advertised anywhere.

It is an eHarmony.com or match.com for college football teams and you will glimpse its results on TV this week and through Labor Day.

Which is how you’ll come to see the University of Hawaii play seventh-ranked Michigan in the largest capacity college football stadium (107,601) in the country Saturday as part of what ESPN, which will carry the game, is billing as college football’s “best opening week ever.”

There, at 6 a.m. Hawaii time, wedged in a lineup that includes made-in-fan-heaven matches of USC vs. Alabama, UCLA vs. Texas A&M, Notre Dame vs. Texas, Florida State vs. Mississippi, Clemson vs. Auburn, LSU vs. Wisconsin, etc. are the Rainbow Warriors.

Four years ago Michigan’s then-athletic director David Brandon, went looking for an opening-game opponent just as interim Hawaii AD Rockne Freitas was casting about for a big payday to pump up UH’s bottom line. Something to put “$1 million in our pocket,” Freitas would say jubilantly later.

At the time UH had never cashed a road-game check of more than $650,000. And Australia would not be a glimmer in the ’Bows’ eyes for years.

Brown, who was ESPN’s vice president for college sports programming, has made it his business for more than a quarter century to keep his ear to the ground for rumblings about who needed games and who was looking for them. In the process of bringing them together, he became a clearinghouse and the industry’s foremost matchmaker.

He sought ratings-building pairings for his employer, but more than that Brown also used his knowledge to dish out suggestions to a network of schools built up over the years, often bringing together disparate parties on and off camera. “He’s been a huge help to Hawaii over the years,” said UH associate AD Carl Clapp. “He calls when he hears about something he thinks we might be interested in or I can call him and see if he knows of something that might help us out.”

Brown said, “Hawaii has some unique scheduling challenges and I try to help, when I can.”

In this case UH will receive a $1 million guarantee to go to Ann Arbor and expects to net in the neighborhood of $600,000 from the excursion after paying expenses, including a rare point-to-point charter flight.

It was, at the time of signing, the largest guarantee ever contracted for by UH.

Only games subsequently added by Ben Jay for last season with Ohio State ($1.2 million) and Wisconsin ($1.1 million) had higher paydays.

Last November the opportunity to play California in Australia was added.

By then, Brown, an engineer by education, had taken the expertise and connections built up over the years and left ESPN, going entrepreneurial. He founded a scheduling company, Gridiron, that sells schools a software package and access to a database.

Meanwhile, just call UH-Michigan a match made at the bank.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.