The University of Hawaii and New Mexico football teams will play this evening in cavernous 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium, a facility so empty and sterile that you might hear the girders rusting between plays.
The gathering of cardboard cutouts might almost be enough to invoke nostalgia for the “crowds” of the 1-11 and 0-12 seasons.
And, yet, as you gaze around the major college landscape this week, the Rainbow Warriors and Lobos are reminded that they are some of the fortunate ones. They, at least, are among those playing.
Ten games — or about 17% of the matchups that had been scheduled at last glance — will not be played this weekend due to the continuing scourge of COVID-19 that shows no signs of leaving.
Consider that the Pac-12 is making its ballyhooed season debut this weekend and before the first ball was in the air two games (Cal-Washington and Utah-Arizona) were canceled.
After the Air Force Academy called off its scheduled game with Army West Point due to “upward trends of COVID-19 cases at the Academy, the football program and in the surrounding community positive tests in Colorado Springs,” Black Knights head coach Jeff Monken, an excitable and passionate sort who once coached at UH, was desperate to try to find a way around it.
So much so that he told his weekly radio show, “Let’s ask them if they want us to come out there. We can play them at the parking lot of the PX or the prep school practice field, I don’t care. We can play them anywhere,” Monken said.
Yes, it has reached that level of desperation as the weeks of football season dwindle and so, too, do the opportunities to play in this pandemic-punched year.
The Lobos, UH’s opponents for the 6 p.m. game, surely know the feeling of urgency. New Mexico had its season opener with Colorado State canceled after suffering 10 positive cases last month. Then, because it resides in a country battling a sustained surge and folks are prohibited from gathering in groups of more than five, New Mexico was forced to give up what was supposed to be its home opener and go to San Jose State just so that game could be played.
To play tonight’s game, the Lobos bused from Albuquerque, N. M., to Las Vegas and set up camp there so they could train before coming here. Next week, instead of finally returning to their home-field, a place once known as Dreamstyle Stadium, the Lobos will play a “home” game in Las Vegas’ Sam Boyd Stadium against Nevada.
It is anybody’s guess if they will play a home game back in the “Land of Enchantment” this season or be the roving Washington Generals of the Mountain West Conference.
Meanwhile, the Rainbow Warriors know something of the Lobos’ plight having played both of their previous games on the road. They did it in front of cardboard cutouts in Fresno and nearly 7,000 “Beer Song”-belting Cowboy faithful in frigid, Laramie, Wyo.
So tonight is a payoff of sorts, both for the thrice weekly polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests their nostrils endure and the work they have put in on the practice field and in the gym.
Not to mention an opportunity to put the losses of last week, 31-7 for UH and 38-21 for the Lobos, behind them.
Mostly, however, it is just an opportunity to play. Something that nobody should take for granted this season.
—
6 p.m.
Pay-per-view • 1420-AM / 92.7-FM
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
