The turnout of 43,487 for Notre Dame's 49-21 victory over Hawai'i was a record for the 26 years of college football bowl games in Hawai'i.

Coming up with an encore will be difficult, organizers concede.

While bowl officials say they are hopeful of pairing UH with a Pac-10 opponent in the 2009 game, "it will be a challenge," acknowledges David A. K. Matlin, executive director of the bowl.

The Hawai'i Bowl is scheduled to get the seventh pick of bowl-eligible Pac-10 teams, if the conference qualifies that many for the postseason. This year the Pac-10 was contracted to send its sixth to Hawai'i and seventh to the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego but only managed to field five that were bowl-eligible. The Pac-10 had eight bowl-eligible in 2006.

"When they (the Pac-10) went to round-robin scheduling it made it harder to get teams (bowl eligible)," Matlin said.

When the NCAA approved a 12-game regular season schedule for 2007, the Pac-10 chose to add a league game and go to a nine-game conference schedule rather than have its members pick up an additional non-conference game. The nine other Football Bowl Subdivision conferences all play seven- or eight-game conference schedules.

"Hopefully, we'll have a Hawai'i team again and I'm confident we'll have a quality opponent for them," said Pete Derzis, vice president of ESPN Regional Television, which owns and operates six bowls, including the Hawai'i Bowl.

"But you never know what is going to happen in the business," Derzis said. "We didn't get a Pac-10 team this year and it turned out to be a blessing because we were able to get Notre Dame. It (the Irish and UH) was the perfect recipe for success."

Had Matlin not been able to land the Fighting Irish, UH would have likely been matched against a team from the Mid-American Conference or Conference USA.

C-USA provided the competition for the Western Athletic Conference representative in five of the seven Hawai'i Bowls. But the game signed a two-year contract with the Pac-10 for 2008 and '09.

Pac-10 teams have traditionally been the strongest draws over the 26-year history of bowl games here, including the Aloha and O'ahu bowls.

Meanwhile, the Warriors' path back to the Hawai'i Bowl will go through a non-conference schedule that includes Navy, Washington State, Nevada-Las Vegas and Wisconsin. Washington State and UNLV will be in back-to-back September road games.