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Enjoy it, Hawaii football fans. Every game from here on out is the biggest game in Timmy Chang’s tenure. Every week can bring you one step closer to a Mountain West Conference championship. As I learned for the last month before my heart was broken a week ago in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series as a Seattle Mariners fan, dreaming big is a lot of fun. With four games left in the regular season, the UH football team is in position to, as Norm Chow famously said, chase championships. We were all reminded under his tenure, and in years before and after, how hard that chase is to even start. Friday night, as kids go trick-or-treating on Halloween, the Rainbow Warriors are contenders in the Mountain West. It’s a far cry from the first three years of Chang’s tenure, when UH had exactly one win in conference play every time the calendar turned from October to November. These Rainbow Warriors are 3-1 in conference with three consecutive victories, including two straight against teams that are headed for what they believe is some amazing jump to a Pac-10, or Pac-12, or Pac-2, or Pac-whatever conference that honestly, is a slap in the face to every version of it before it blew up for good at the end of the 2023-24 academic year. What began as a season in which Hawaii just wanted to finally make its own bowl game for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, is now a year that has the same feel as those June Jones teams that culminated in a WAC championship and trip to the Sugar Bowl. I understand that beginning with San Jose State this week, each Saturday, or Friday, UH plays could bring the pain of a George Springer three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh inning against Seattle’s fourth-best reliever, but remember, it only hurts that much because of all the success that came before it. This team clinched a bowl berth in October, before we even know the World Series matchup. Who saw that coming this summer? There was hope — plenty of it — beginning with Micah Alejado’s 469-yard, five-touchdown performance to end the 2024 season against New Mexico. But really? How successful was a program going to be that was 2-15 on the road under a head coach entering his fourth season with a one-year extension that fans were 50-50 at best excited about? Did we really think Hawaii was going to beat a team in Colorado State that was 10-3 at home all-time against UH before last week? The Rainbow Warriors hadn’t defeated Utah State since Greg Salas was putting the final touches on his record-setting 4,345 receiving yards that remains the school’s all-time mark today. Suddenly they were going to be good enough to beat that Utah State program, even if it was at home? We’ve seen the warning sign in Colorado Springs, Colo. Elevation: 6,621 feet above sea level. Surely UH isn’t going to get enough stops on defense, against that offense, to win that game? They did. Each time. Three wins by a combined 39 points. Three victories in which Hawaii outscored its opponents 64-42 in the second half. Now we dare to dream. San Jose State has opened as a 2.5-point favorite this week, an opening line that is every bit as curious as the Colorado Sate line that was the exact same spread. The Spartans are coming off back-to-back losses to Wyoming and Utah State, both on the road, but with a bye week to prepare, similar to UH, you know head coach Ken Niumatalolo and offensive coordinator Craig Stutzmann have had this one circled on their calendars since the schedule came out. I’ll take the quarterback who has thrown at least three touchdowns in each of the last three games in Alejado. I like my chances with a fully healthy receiving corps that has seen Jackson Harris turn into Jason Rivers with three straight 100-yard receiving games and four touchdowns. I’ll take a defense that racked up 11 sacks and forced four turnovers over that three-game winning streak that has a defensive line that is suddenly as big of a strength as any other unit on the team. And if the games are close? You already know the legend of the Tokyo Toe. I only learned the other week there is a Heisman Trophy podcast and I only heard about it because it did an episode on a KICKER from Hawaii named Kansei Matsuzawa. Tell me what those odds were in August. I’m ready for anything with these final four games. Another win and the excitement and intensity only rises with each week. A loss and the pain will hurt in a way it hasn’t for a long time. The main thing is this team has made Hawaii football fans feel something again, and right now, it feels pretty good.
