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The last time the University of Hawaii football team generated this much offseason national attention was when legendary quarterback Colt Brennan said hed return to Manoa instead of going to the NFL after a stellar junior year that ended with a domination of Arizona State.
An undefeated 2007 regular season and UHs only BCS bowl appearance followed.
Around this time last year, some of the anonymous sky-is-falling crowd got braver, as it always does after a few losing seasons.
But look at what a difference a 9-4 record makes especially when the season ends with a bowl game victory against a team from a supposedly higher level.
Something sort of like that happened when UH completed its 2019 season at 10-5 with a win over BYU in the Hawaii Bowl.
But offseason momentum then was stunted by the departure of head coach Nick Rolovich to Washington State.
Rolo, UH coach Timmy Changs former teammate and fellow quarterback, is now at Cal, which lost to Hawaii in Decembers thrilling Hawaii Bowl.
College football is far different than in 2019, when the playoff still consisted of four teams, and even more so than in 2007, before the CFP existed.
It has also never been more unpredictable.
That is why an ESPN analyst wrote that the Warriors can make it to the 12-team CFP.
Bill Connelly has since tempered that view but not abandoned it.
Granted, (the prediction) came with a little bit of snark the CFP committee only deigns to consider mid-majors if they were lucky enough to schedule multiple power conference opponents, and Hawaii did that but there was a grain of truth in there, too, Connelly wrote in a May 26 post, where he included UH among five contenders to win the Mountain West Conference championship.
Athlon Sports Steve Lassan is more measured, as he predicts the Warriors do well enough to earn a Hawaii Bowl matchup with UCLA.
Either way, Chang deserves credit for steadily building with plenty of help up and down the chain of command what looks to be a solid foundation.
Theres enough potential upside that the winning season isnt looked upon as a fluke.
Even without Hawaiis unique challenges, college football is chaotic.
No sport has more literal moving parts.
Rosters now cap at 105 players, more than 3,000 FBS players entered the transfer portal this offseason, and entire programs continue to change conferences.
The Mountain West, where UH plays, this year welcomes UTEP, Northern Illinois and traditional FCS powerhouse North Dakota State.
Unlike 2007, Hawaii is punching up out of conference, with games at Stanford and Arizona State.
The undefeated regular season included just one road nonconference game (at UNLV, which went 2-10), and two home mismatches against what were then called I-AA teams (now FCS).
Some say this years Warriors could make it to the CFP even if they lose one of their nonconference road games.
But even from another conference, Boise State still stands in the way.
If they dominate the Pac-12 and show well at Oregon in their Sept.
5 nonconference opener, the Warriors old nemesis, the Broncos, could block the path of a one-loss or even undefeated UH team.
Connellys projection leans heavily on the Hawaii schedule.
I also pay attention to the sportsbooks.
They favor UNLV and New Mexico in the Mountain West, with North Dakota State and Hawaii viewed as dark horses.
If the Warriors dont win the conference, what happens at Stanford and Arizona State likely becomes irrelevant to the CFP discussion even though, technically, you dont have to win a conference championship to get the Group of 6 automatic bid.
You just have to be the committees highest-ranked team from the G6 conferences: American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Pac-12 and Sun Belt.
Tulane (American Athletic) and James Madison (Sun Belt) both made it last year.
This is all part of why preseason projections are guesses, more than ever.
Also, no one, not even the sportsbooks, can fully account for the transfer portal and conference realignment until the games begin.
Like the Warriors of 2007, this team has the hope that comes with a star quarterback choosing to return instead of leaving for potentially greener pastures.
One of the differences is that this time the conferences preseason Offensive Player of the Year, Micah Alejado, still has three years of eligibility.
Most of the rest is conjecture at this point.
But when there are this many questions, everywhere, they lead to one more, at least for now: Why not?.