Return trips to Hawaii were special for Nick Rolovich when he was the offensive coordinator at Nevada.

Part of it was that he considered this “home” since playing and coaching at the University of Hawaii, where he met his wife.

But there was also the ease of travel because the Wolf Pack took charter flights to Honolulu — paid for by UH.

“The travel subsidies from UH helped us charter to Hawaii,” Rolovich told state lawmakers recently.

As UH’s new head football coach, Rolovich will go back to commercial flights for much of the Rainbow Warriors’ travel to the mainland this year.

School officials are hoping such testimonials will help legislators better understand the $5.2 million in so-called “unique costs” claimed by UH due to its geography, the biggest of which is travel at approximately $3 million.

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Senate bill 83, which would provide $3 million for travel assistance to be shared by Manoa and Hilo, is scheduled for a hearing Wednesday before House Committee on Tourism.

UH is the only school in the 129-member Football Bowl Subdivision that subsidizes travel for its conference foes, a requirement of membership in the Mountain West Conference, where UH competes in football, and the Big West Conference, where most of its other sports call home.

The issue of subsidies goes back nearly 40 years to when UH was admitted to its first conference, the Western Athletic Conference, in 1979, but at only a fraction of the current cost.

When the WAC added six schools to become a 16-member league in 1996, UH won an end to subsidies. The relief, however, was short-lived. When conferences began realigning in 2010 and UH was desperate to find new homes for its men’s and women’s teams, the leagues it sought entry to demanded travel subsidies — termed “travel cost sharing” in the contracts — as a condition of membership.

In the MWC, visitors from California receive a standard $150,000 each while opponents from beyond receive $175,000. In the Big West, UH subsidizes opponents at $500 a head based upon squad size.

Together, UH pays about $1.3 million annually to subsidize opponent travel while receiving not a cent for its own league travel.

Rolovich said, “I was on the other side at Nevada as far as departures and missed class time, its (impact) on academics and the overall health and recovery (of players). We were able to leave right after the game at Aloha Stadium.”

At UH, he said, “We’re not looking for charters. We understand where we are with the geography, our kids and all of our coaches understand that.”

UH officials have conceded that subsidies are a fact of life and have increasingly sought government and sponsorship help in defraying travel costs. They have pitched several entities, including the Hawaii Tourism Authority, citing a 2015 Shidler College of Business report that claimed UH athletic events drew 20,000 visitors to the state who spent $31 million in 2013-14.

In 2011 when Hawaiian Airlines signed a $1.5 million field naming rights deal at Aloha Stadium the Stadium Authority agreed to look at passing on a portion of the money.

Last year the Authority presented UH with a check for $150,000.

The bill currently before the legislature would make an appropriation from the Tourism Special Fund for 2016-17, the same fund that underwrites the HTA.

If passed, it would be up to the governor whether funding continued beyond 2017.

While UH athletic director David Matlin said he was “encouraged by the changing narrative in people recognizing the uniqueness of our situation and the need for support,” he said he “understands it is a balancing act of a lot of different needs.”

In testimony, the HTA said, “We have tremendous aloha for the UH athletics program. Our opposition to SB 83 is limited to paying for travel expenses and subsidies from the Tourism Special Fund. Under (statute), the Tourism Special Fund is to be used to carry out HTA’s mandate. Under that mandate, HTA is directed to promote Hawaii as a premier visitor destination and integrate the interests of visitors, the community and the visitor industry. The proposal to fund expenses and subsidies incurred by the UH athletics program is far removed from HTA’s mandate and the purpose of the Tourism Special Fund. There is simply no nexus between the proposed expenditure and the purpose of the fund.”

The HTA said, “UH is a great institutional asset of the state. At HTA, we are proud to cheer for our UH teams. UH must look to its operating budget to pay for its athletes’ travel expenses. The Tourism Special Fund has a different purpose — a purpose that is too important to the state to be diverted.”