It is Make-A-Wish time once again in the Mountain West Conference, and there’s little doubt what the University of Hawaii should, pretty please, be asking for:

A Sept. 24 open date on its 2016 football schedule. Or, failing that, at least a home game.

FACTGOESHERE

And, no, doing away with travel subsidies isn’t on the table.

For their $80,000 annual associate membership fee, the Rainbow Warriors, as is the case with the 11 full members, are permitted to file one request before the MWC computers spit out the upcoming season’s schedule.

Traditionally, many conferences allow members to submit one scheduling request per season and some schools have used the opportunity to play a rival on a certain weekend, work in an open date or state some other preference. UH, for example, in the Western Athletic Conference and MWC, used to ask that its road games at Nevada-Las Vegas be scheduled in mid-September to accommodate its fans and partnership with Boyd Gaming.

But when the MWC expanded to 12 teams it was decided by conference athletic directors, in the interest of scheduling expediency, to do away with the request system.

So, last year UH fans shivered in 40 degree temperatures in Vegas in November and the ‘Bows found themselves playing three distant road games — at Ohio State, Wisconsin and Boise State — in a particularly arduous four-week stretch. This in a 13-games-in-13-weeks schedule devoid of open dates.

With six new ADs in the conference in the intervening seasons, including David Matlin, the request card has been brought back into play, conference officials said. And, not a moment too soon for football’s most well-traveled team — college or pro — UH.

Thanks to the opportunity to make UH’s first international appearance, the Aug. 27 game vs. Cal in Australia, the ‘Bows are already booked for more than 25,000 miles and three games away from Aloha Stadium in just the first 25 days of its season. It is an itinerary that will have the Rainbow Warriors hopping from Honolulu to Sydney, back to Honolulu, to Ann Arbor, Mich., back home again and then off to Tucson, Ariz.

That will take them more miles in less than a month than most NFL teams will fly in a season — exhibition and regular season combined.

What the ‘Bows and rookie head coach Nick Rolovich don’t need come the Sept. 24 date is to immediately compound the travel demands and extend their academic challenges by jumping on another plane to one of their four conference road games — Air Force, Fresno State, San Diego State or San Jose State — in that puka.

Should they be booked for the road on that date, there would be the possibility of missing as many as 10 of the first 24 days of instruction in the fall semester.

Matlin has been exploring the possibilities and it requires a decision soon. A MWC spokesman said the schedule is due to be announced sometime “between March 1 and April 1.”

So, this is where UH’s make-a-wish comes in. Or needs to.

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