Maybe you noticed the appearance of that curious cube-like design emblazoned on the turf at Aloha Stadium last week where the Western Athletic Conference logo once resided.

Officially, we’re told by the conference office, it is known as “The Rock,” and it is the logo  — cue the trumpets — of the “new” Mountain West Conference.

Never mind that, as the sight of today’s opponent, the all-too-familiar Nevada Wolf Pack, reminds, it sure looks a lot like the “old” WAC, where UH spent the previous 33 years.

Especially since it has been barely 10 months since UH last banged shoulder pads with Nevada and even less time has passed since the Wolf Pack were here for the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl.

Again.

The Wolf Pack’s appearance for that third in a series of Christmas Eves should be something of a bah, humbug! sore point, since Nevada has effectively taken the Warriors’ spot each of those years (2011, ’09 and ’05) by knocking off UH.

More than any other game on the Warriors’ schedule, the game with the Wolf Pack has become a bellwether for the Warriors’ season, presaging their postseason prospects, or lack thereof. Over the last eight seasons it has been simple: When the Warriors have won the Nevada game, they went to a bowl. When they didn’t, well, they watched the postseason on TV, courtesy of Nevada, which was in their stadium.

SO HERE WE ARE in the third game of a 12-game regular season for the Warriors and, if history is any guide, it is already an unofficial bowl elimination game for UH.

Win and the Hawaii Bowl folks can begin heaving a sigh of relief and selling some tickets. Lose and, well, it may not be all that merry of a Christmas.  

Which makes a lot of sense in the big picture, since the Warriors require at least six victories to go bowling and the schedule is evenly divided between six home games and six road contests.

Nevada and Boise State, teams picked first and second in the conference preseason poll, loom as the biggest obstacles to sweeping that home schedule.

Absent victories in either or both of those two contests, the Warriors will have to “steal” some on the road, which the years tell us is problematic. Especially this year, a season in which the Warriors play two sets of back-to-back road contests, Brigham Young-San Diego State and Colorado State-Fresno State, in a six-week period.

 The first two games of this season haven’t told us all that much about these rebuilt Warriors. But this one should. We know, for example, that Southern California was too much for UH and Lamar wasn’t nearly enough.

Somewhere in between is what we should come to expect of the Warriors. That’s where Nevada comes in, again, offering an indication of exactly where.

One more thing about that new MWC logo. Lose today and UH’s bowl hopes are between that “Rock” and a hard place.

And, really, how many more times can we stomach the Wolf Pack here in December singing “Mele Kalikimaka?”

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