Lee Cataluna: UH football fans fill the stands, but the full house is a pretty small house

Even before Saturday’s football game between the University of Hawaii and UCLA kicked off, some Bruins fans watching the national television broadcast wasted no time in pointing out the elephant in the room.

It was a very small elephant.

“When was the last time UCLA played in a venue this small?” posted one commenter on BruinZone.com.

Other UCLA fans took it upon themselves to answer what could have been a rhetorical question: “I remember a game in Houston maybe 25 years ago that looked like a high school stadium on TV.”

Ouch.

Saturday’s game at the Clarence TC Ching Athletics Complex on the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus was declared “officially sold out” by the UH athletic department. However, during CBS’ live broadcast of the game, it sure looked like there was plenty of empty space in those hot stands.

Meanwhile, Bruins fans were left speechless by the spectacle. On Bruingold.com, one UCLA fan predicted the game “should have a high school (Texas) feel.”

The Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the game was more charitable than the fans’ chatter.

“UCLA to play in smallest arena of the season,” headlined journalist Iliana Limón Romero online. “The Rainbow Warriors’ stadium is under renovation, so the Bruins are preparing to play in their smallest arena of the season, with a capacity of 16,909.”

Not quite. Aloha Stadium is not being renovated. It just sits there, slowly rusting, awaiting a reinvention that continues to grow grander and grander, far beyond what the island or the island’s biggest soccer team can support. The current cost of the new development is $400 million from the state as part of a public-private partnership that would include housing, hotels, retail, entertainment and commercial businesses in the area.

Ching Field’s current capacity is 15,194. On match day, the announced crowd was 13,470, not including spectators filmed watching the game from the shaded comfort of the adjacent parking lot.

Yes, Ching Stadium looked pretty small on TV, but it’s the right size for Hawaii.

It’s the right size for a college football program that has struggled for more than a decade, a state that has no professional teams and a location that’s a long plane ride for mainland teams.

One of the fundamental problems of modern Hawaii is a kind of body dysmorphia. These islands are much smaller than local leaders think. Oversized projects are approved and built, but cannot be supported by local residents or tourist dollars.

The Ching Resort may look small on TV, but Hawaii is small. The population of these islands — just over 1.4 million — is less than half the size of Orange County, California. We can’t have what they have. We shouldn’t. Things work better for us at the right scale. So many of Hawaii’s problems stem from this misconception that bigger makes better. Sometimes Costco is too big.

Coach Timmy Chang is living the dream of a local kid who made it in his hometown college, turned pro, and then came back home to coach his alma mater’s football team. It would be awesome for him to have a winning season in his third year on the job. Fingers crossed for you, buddy.

But even if he has one incredible season followed by several more incredible seasons, even if he leads Hawaii to a glorious winning streak that stretches for years, he will still have trouble filling the new Aloha Stadium, which is slated to seat 25,000. That’s half of what the old stadium could hold, but rarely did. But at the Ching Complex, students can move in from the dorms, fans can huddle on those metal bleachers, and game days can feel loud and exuberant instead of quiet and sadly empty. The most successful long-term use of Aloha Stadium is the weekend flea market in the parking lot.

Stay at the Ching. Invest in the Ching. Move out of Halawa for low-cost housing with room for vegetable and lei gardens, a community learning center, and maybe a small business incubator. Keep UH football on the UH campus where the UH community can easily fill the student section (or sneak a peek from the parking lot).

Build a local fan base. Build a community. Create some shade. Not every game will be televised. It’s better to have a team that generates more buzz than its stadium than a stadium that will always be overrated and underutilized.