I have a crazy (and I'll keep it quick story) about USF Football playing in Hawaii .....
2002 USF was given a conditional bid to play in whatever they called the bowl game in Hawaii that year.
I knew I wanted to be at USF's first bowl game, but I couldn't afford plane tickets ... so I had to use my miles .... but award seats to Hawaii over the holidays at the last moment are hard to come by ..... so my routing was Tampa to Atlanta, to San Francisco to Honolulu. ... I would then be on the ground in Hawaii for 36 hours - just one night.... then I would fly Honolulu to Los Angeles, to Atlanta to Birmingham ... then I was on my own to figure out how to get from Birmingham back to Tampa ..... I had Delta hold that for me the day before the game that would decide our fate (Cincinnati vs. ECU I think) ... the wrong team won, we didn't get the bid, and I didn't have to fly my whirlwind trip to Hawaii and back for just one night out there.
Remember it like it was yesterday. Only good thing about the loss was it would have been hard to make it. But I would have!! To this day it is why I hate the Bearcats.