While it remains to be seen how much scrambling quarterback Max Wittek might do this season, there will be plenty for University of Hawaii football fans early on.

The Rainbow Warriors’ first five games will be spread across four different television platforms.

Between the CBS Sports Network, which will carry the Sept. 3 opener with Colorado; the Big Ten Network, which will show the Ohio State and Wisconsin games; local pay-per-view — which has eight games on Oceanic and Hawaiian Telcom; and ESPN, all 13 UH games will be available to most cable subscribers here.

Pay-per-view pricing will remain the same as last year, cable providers said.

“But fans are going to need to do their reconnaissance this year,” a UH spokesman said.

As recently as 2009 it was much simpler: All UH games were on ESPN or pay-per-view — or they weren’t shown at all.

But the increasingly fragmented college football market has changed that, sending fans up and down myriad channels. The marquee conferences — Pac-12, Big Ten, Southeastern, etc. — have launched their own lucrative networks, and would-be ESPN competitors such as CBS Sports Network (formerly CBS College Sports) and NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus) have joined Fox in increasingly gobbling up available inventory.

UH’s fall from prominence has also contributed. As recently as 2011, four years after the Sugar Bowl season, the ‘Bows were still booked for four ESPN regular-season games in a year. Sportscaster Jim Leahey used to bemoan the number of games snatched away from his employers, KFVE/Oceanic, by cable colossus ESPN, terming it “the engulf and conquer network.”

In the past two years ESPN has sought to “conquer’ very little of UH’s schedule, taking one game, total, in the period.

That game, a 2014 appearance on ESPNU in a 49-22 loss at Colorado State, drew a reported 0.1 rating, the smallest for a metered (Nielsen) game in UH’s history.

UH’s lone scheduled game on ESPN this year will be Oct. 3 at Boise, and that appearance has more to do with the Broncos’ appeal. Under the contract with the Mountain West Conference that brought Boise State back to the conference after a dalliance with the then-Big East, ESPN gets first call on Boise State’s home slate.

Even as a reduced draw, UH’s appearances on ESPN have still been the football program’s most visible stages. CBSSN and BTN reach less than 60 percent of the households of ESPN and ESPN2 and about 70 percent of the homes subscribed to ESPNU.

UH’s games at Ohio State and Wisconsin will be the Rainbow Warriors’ first on the nine-year-old BTN, a joint venture of the Big Ten and Fox that pays each conference member $7 million annually.

The Rainbow Warriors’ only TV rights fees are through the local pay-per-view deal that guarantees the school a minimum of $2.3 million this year.

UH knows where its paydays will come from, even if sometimes finding the channels for its games sometimes takes more hunting.

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

CLICKING ON THE ’BOWS

Hawaii will be on television plenty this season, but it might not be the easiest to find from week to week, especially early on:

* Yet to be decided between ESPN, ESPN 2 and ESPNU.

Source: Oceanic.

PAY-PER-VIEW PRICING

Note: Early bird package available through 8 p.m. of Sept. 19. Three-game away package is available to UH season ticket holders only.