Hawaii Bowl Back with C-USA

The Star-Bulletin has an article about the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl renewing its tie-in with Conference USA.

The 2009 Sheraton Hawaii Bowl will include a team from Conference USA as the opponent to Hawaii or another Western Athletic Conference team should the Warriors not qualify for the game.

The Conference USA team will either be the league's second place team, or another mutually agreed upon bowl eligible team from the conference.

The Sheraton Hawaii Bowl was slated for the Pac-10’s seventh selection this year, but because the Pac-10 had only five bowl eligible teams in 2008, all parties mutually agreed to void the Pac-10 Conference selection for 2009.

...here are some of the top C-USA teams along with their 2008 records:

Tulsa (11-3)
Rice (10-3)
East Carolina (9-5)
Houston (8-5)
SMU (redacted)

FWIW, those are some pretty good teams.