FRESNO, Calif. — The University of Hawai'i football team will no longer dress in a dank, cramped baseball dugout at Fresno State. The confrontational student section has been moved well beyond spitting and beer-tossing (popular pastimes of some of the fraternities) distance of the Warriors' bench at Bulldog Stadium and alcohol sales in the stands have been banned.

"What do you mean they've toned it down in Fresno?" said UH safety Leonard Peters, taking instant umbrage at any notion of a kinder, gentler Bulldog Stadium for his third visit. "I like the taunts and stuff; they get me going."

Fear not, Leonard, curses about players' mothers, girlfriends and pets, not to mention suggestions of physically impossible feats of contortion, will still descend upon the Warriors at Saturday's game. There will be plenty to stoke the competitive fires. The freshmen, as Peters suggests, will still get an eye — and ear — full. Just maybe not a face full.

This is, after all, where UH claimed a screwdriver was tossed at head coach June Jones. Where sportscaster Scott Robbs was once involved in a fight in the stands and a team doctor once responded to the taunts of Fresno fans by saying, in effect, we lost, but we get to go back to Hawai'i, you have to stay here.

So inhospitable have the surroundings been that Jones has not had the Warriors practice nearby since 2000, when members of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity took to their roof to heckle a UH practice adjacent to Bulldog Stadium. For this week, UH will stay overnight in Ontario, Calif. before coming in Friday evening.

"Oh, yeah, I've heard the stories," said UH quarterback Colt Brennan. "Everybody has."

But, alas, the environment that opened wide Peters' eyes and assaulted his ears as a freshman is changing. And not just because the 1-4 Bulldogs are struggling this season. Jim Sweeny Field at Bulldog Stadium is still one of the toughest places on the West Coast for a visitor (FSU's winning percentage is 80 percent; 82 percent in the WAC) and FSU still draws well in the 41,031-seat facility. But the combination no longer adds up to quite the hell hole of enduring legend.

Even the infamous "Red Mile" — the 372-step gauntlet visiting teams had to travel from the baseball dugout to the field lined by leather-lunged fans and past porta-johns that Jones has said seemed more like "800 yards" — has been shortened. "We now walk 30 yards more than our opponents," FSU coach Pat Hill maintains.

With the opening of the Bulldogs new locker room this year, visitors now use the old Bulldog locker room, reducing by about 100 steps the walk of intimidation and abuse. That's no small consideration for players in cleats slip-sliding across rutted asphalt like a beginner's skating class at the Ice Palace while trying to maintain their dignity under a hail of taunts.

Part of the change is attributable to a new Western Athletic Conference sportsmanship initiative that removes student sections from being directly behind the bench of a visiting team. Fresno State now sells the seats, with added chairbacks, on a premium seat basis.

There is also a California State University system ban on on-campus alcohol sales — some call it the "Fresno State rule" — and FSU's own on-going efforts to clean up an environment that has brought it notoriety and given non-conference opponents an excuse not to play the Bulldogs on a home-and-home basis.

One thing that hasn't changed is the Warriors' desire to pull a rare win out of a stadium where they have been 1-6-1.

"I've been (to Fresno) for both basketball and football," said defensive lineman Ikaika Alama-Francis, "and, how shall we say this, both (facilities) are exciting to say the least. It is the kind of a place where you really want to leave with a win."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.