Looking out over the harbor lights in San Diego, amid the Holiday Bowl in 1992, then-University of Hawai'i athletic director Stan Sheriff wondered out loud where the football team could go from there.

Would the Holiday Bowl triumph — and the No. 20 ranking that came with beating Illinois — forever mark the pinnacle for UH football?

Sheriff hoped for more, much more, wishing that someday UH would find its way into one of the New Year's Day bowls that he said would define the next level of achievement for the school.

Sheriff died less than a month later but the wish — shared by thousands of other Warrior fans over the years — comes true Tuesday in the 74th Sugar Bowl played in the appropriately named Superdome in New Orleans.

Where else but a 27-story arena recognized in the 1996 Guinness Books of Records as the largest-sized indoor arena could play host to a dream this big? Where better but over a 13-acre spread and across 81,120 square feet of artificial turf known thereabouts as "Mardi grass" could something this long in coming be played out?

Not only does UH play in a game that shares the distinction of being the second-oldest operating bowl but it draws in Georgia, the Associated Press' No. 4-ranked team, a program of distinction in the south, a hotbed of college football.

A daunting challenge to be sure but also something to be embraced as a rich reward for a season of stirring accomplishment.

Exactly four months to the day from when UH kicked off its 2007 season of high hopes against a warm-up opponent in Northern Colorado, it has an opportunity to raise a giant exclamation point in Game No. 13 against the Bulldogs. Two more unlikely and disparate opponent bookends to a season it would be hard to find.

But then, again, it was that kind of a year for the now No. 10 Warriors who struggled mightily just to get out of Ruston, La., in September with an overtime come-from-behind victory and now find themselves down state in "The Big Easy."

It was a journey anything but "easy" necessitating, as it did, two overtime triumphs, a couple close calls, game-changing kicks and game-saving interceptions and batted down passes. In other words precisely the kind of moxie and good fortune required for a school that had never lost fewer than two games in a season to close a regular one with a perfect record.

The competition that awaits them is a match of opposites, Eastern Time Zone vs. Hawaiian Time. Premier defense of the Bulldogs vs. against UH's nation-leading offense. Old, established program vs. young, rising program. Black (Georgia's uniforms of choice) vs. white (UH's). Run first vs. throw almost always.

Fifteen years after wondering if anything would surpass the much-decorated Holiday Bowl season the Warriors will, fittingly enough, open a new year and new era in their history.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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