College Football's Weirdest Matchup Requires Crazy Amount Of Travel To Hawaii, For Free
The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa is the most isolated college in the United States. Its beautiful campus is located on the southeastern corner of O'ahu in Mānoa, a neighborhood of Honolulu.
As a result, no athletics department travels more than the Rainbow Warriors. Its seven men's programs, 12 women's programs and two co-ed programs have to fly at least six hours over the Pacific Ocean to California for every away game/match.
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington football are going to be forced to cover an absurd amount of miles during their first season in the Big Ten, when they fly across the country to play schools like Rutgers, Iowa, etc. The Bruins will also fly over to Hawaii next fall!
Hawaii football has to cover that same amount of distance and more, every year. The Rainbow Warriors average about 2,900 miles per road trip and once traveled more than 50,000 miles in a single season.
Hawaii will stay mostly on the west coast this year. For away games at Vanderbilt, Oregon, UNLV, New Mexico, Nevada and Wyoming, it will go about 19,000 miles. Not too bad, comparatively.
Hawaii home games require visitors to travel long distances.
On the flip side of things, the Rainbow Warriors will host one of the weirdest games of the entire college football season and it requires an insane amount of travel for their opponents. On Sept. 9, the University at Albany will fly way west to Honolulu for an unusual FCS/FBS matchup.
Albany Great Danes(Image courtesy: University at Albany athletics)
The Great Danes will open their season against Fordham during Week 0 and then hit the road for back-to-back games at Marshall in West Virginia and then at Hawaii in, well, Hawaii.
Albany's third game of the season will require approximately 12 hours of travel from upstate New York to the most isolated populated landmass in the world. More than 4,500 miles separate the two schools on a direct line and there are no direct flights from Albany to Honolulu.
(Image via Google Maps)
Fortunately, the trip is paid for! Hawaii is picking up the tab, and more.
College football's weirdest matchup is a haul.
The Rainbow Warriors will pay the Danes $150,000 plus round-trip airfare for the 120-member traveling party. That was the only way that the trip was feasible.
Albany head coach Greg Gattuso actually played in Honolulu as a senior at Penn State. The Nittany Lions beat the Washington Huskies during the 1983 Aloha Bowl.
It's a great experience for the players and that will be a great experience and a trip for all of our fans, anyone that wants to go
It's a really unique and amazing place. For a football program, I'm excited about it and I think our kids will be excited about it.
Unlike Gattuso's bowl experience, Aloha Stadium will be demolished. New stadium plans were recently bumped back to 2028.
This year's matchup will be held at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex. It is an on-campus practice facility that used to be the football practice field— while also housing beach volleyball, women's soccer, cross country and track & field. Capacity was just expanded to 15,000.
To help get the Danes back into a groove upon return to the continental United States, they will have a bye week on the following Saturday. They will get back to it at Morgan State on Sept. 23.