Mad Dog was in a grrr mood.

It was the week leading to the 1973 road game against Washington, and few gave the University of Hawaii football team a please-please-please chance of coming close.

There was no official betting line on the game — the Rainbow Warriors were an independent — but David “Mad Dog” Mutter heard the mutterings.

“What’s a spread?” Mutter recalled of the chatter at that time. “I didn’t know what a spread was. They said, ‘You’re an underdog.’ Obviously. It was always claimed to be 50 points.”

In one of the program’s biggest upsets, the Rainbows defeated the Huskies 10-7.

Mutter thought about that game as this season’s 0-2 Warriors prepare to play Michigan in the 107,601-seat Big House on Saturday. The Wolverines were installed initially as 48.5-point favorites, a line that quickly jumped to an even 50.

“I wouldn’t put that Washington team in the same caliber as this Michigan team,” Mutter said of the Huskies, who spiraled to 2-9 in 1973.

But Mutter is empathetic to the current Warriors’ disadvantages in finances and facilities. The Warriors are playing their home games at the Ching Complex, which was retrofitted to 9,345 seats and with food trucks replacing tailgating.

When Mutter was a freshman in 1970, the Rainbows held training camp at Pearl Harbor. They stayed in Quonset huts with no air conditioning. Shirts with sleeves were required for breakfast. “If you were wearing slippers, you’d better have socks on or you don’t eat,” said Mutter, noting breakfast ended at 6 a.m. sharp.

Mutter and teammate Bill Letz were wrestling fans who often attended the matches at the KGMB studios. Letz was a fan of “Cowboy” Frankie Laine; Mutter followed Lonnie “Mad Dog” Layne. They “borrowed” the turnbuckles from Bloch Arena to create wrestling shows for teammates. They once convinced the Honolulu Stadium public address announcer to refer to them as “Cowboy Bill Letz” and “David ‘Mad Dog’ Mutter” during football introductions.

The next two years, training camp was moved to the old UH pool. Bunkbeds were set up on the pool deck. Married players were allowed to sleep in the dorms or off-campus apartments. The football offices were located in what was then known as the “Quarry.” Manoa rain turned it into a quagmire.

This environment produced an undersized but gritty team. Defensive lineman Levi Stanley’s followers were known as “Levi’s Kanaka Army.” Cornerback Jeris White was a Radford High graduate who played nine NFL seasons. Cliff Laboy received All-America honorable mention in 1974. And the center was one tough Mutter.

“‘Mad Dog’ fit me because I was not a very friendly guy,” Mutter said.

Mutter recalled the lead-up to the 1973 opener. The Rainbows traveled to Seattle on a nonstop TWA flight. On that Thursday, they visited a salmon hatchery. “Tourist stuff,” Mutter said of viewing 4-foot-long salmon. “Pretty cool.”

The Rainbows tried to ignore the bulletin-board barbs. Almost. “They were less than complimentary,” Mutter said. “They called us ‘Hula Hippies.’ We dismissed completely their opinion of our talent level.”

Mutter said coach Dave Holmes was hesitant to give pep talks or invite guest speakers. “He was low key, focused, and a man of few words in most cases,” Mutter said of Holmes, who died in 1999.

Of the pregame mood, Mutter said, “It wasn’t intimidating. It wasn’t awe-inspiring. It was, ‘Let’s go play them and see what happens.’”

Reports noted attendance was more than 55,000 at Husky Stadium that day. “It’s funny, when you go into that environment, you don’t really notice,” Mutter said. “I didn’t look up in the stands. I don’t remember anyone being in the stadium. It was a blank. All that mattered was what was between the white lines.”

Casey Ortiz threw a touchdown pass to roommate Allen Brown. Stanley produced 11 tackles. Hal Stringert made three picks. The Warriors had a game-defining goal-line stand. And Mutter got in the way of nose tackle Dave Pear, a future Pro Bowler with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

‘”I managed to slow him down,” Mutter said. “The whole object of offensive line is to get your head between that guy’s body and the ball. You don’t have to pancake. You don’t have to do a lot of things. The whole idea is: Where’s the point of attack and where’s your helmet and body?”

The celebration was long lasting. Mutter, Letz and an assistant coach returned to the hotel as teammates were stowing their bags on the bus.

Of that outcome, Mutter, who delivered a pep talk to the Warriors last year, said: “It’s over-simplistic, but they completely took us for granted. It didn’t turn out that way.”