News and Notes

Pay-per-view broadcasts of UH home games may be in HD this season.

"We're still working out a few kinks, but it looks really, really positive," Santos said. "We're still working out the schedule and trying to figure out some other things."

The price of pay-per-view has steadily risen since the package's creation in 2002, and will go up again. Last year's package of 18 games (11 football, four basketball, and three volleyball) was $430 on Oahu, or $380 for renewing customers.

Santos said the price will increase as incentive to get fans out to games. The specific price range is expected later this week. There is also a significant cost involved to convert to HD; Oceanic has broadcast some high school games in HD on OC-16.

"I think the major consideration previously (was that) we all had some skepticism as to putting such a good quality product on TV; less people would show up at the stadium," Santos said. "So we're trying to make sure we don't detract from the live audience."

Ferd Lewis looks at early lines Vegas is putting on UH games.

The Golden Nugget race and sports book, the early bird on the college football season, has installed the Warriors as seven-point underdogs to Nevada-Las Vegas (Sept. 19), three-point underdogs to Fresno (Oct. 10) and 17-point underdogs to Boise State (Oct. 24), according to the Oklahoma fan website, www.blatanthomerism.com.

And UH athletic director Jim Donovan had another First and 10 chat on SportsHawaii.com yesterday. Here's an excerpt of his answer to Garret's question regarding the new "Road Warrior" program:

The Road Warrior concept is a creation of Koa Anuenue.... The stimulus was a combination of the demand for Sugar Bowl tickets and the desire for some mainland fans to have a "higher priority" when it comes to purchasing tickets to a UH road game.

You are correct that this year's road games -- especially Washington State, UNLV and San Jose State -- will likely have many tickets available for UH fans. But this will not always be the case.

When a UH fan purchases an away game football ticket from us, we are "earning" only $10 per ticket -- all the other cost of the ticket goes to the home team and we do not get any prorated portion of that sale. So if we sell 10,000 tickets to the UNLV game through our box office, we would earn $100,000 from that away game. If a UH fan buys a ticket directly from the host institution, UH "earns" nothing from their purchase/support and the UH fan may be placed in a section surrounded or in the middle of the host institution's fans.