A common, if not standard, college football coach's response to any question about preseason polls is that they don't mean anything.

Well, we're here this morning to tell you that they do.

Especially if you are the University of Hawai'i and the Western Athletic Conference. Then, they have the potential to mean a lot.

The Warriors are 24th in the USA Today Coaches' Poll today and five-time defending conference champion Boise State is 23rd. Both reason for raising some din in the nation's most geographically diverse conference.

Maybe if you're Michigan and the Big Ten or Florida and the Southeastern Conference, such things are as ho hum as back-to-school sales. But when you're UH, which hadn't cracked a preseason Top 25 in school history, or the WAC, which hadn't placed two teams there in the 17 years of the poll, this is a promising start to a year of barely tethered hopes.

Indeed, two of the three teams in the poll from non-Bowl Championship Series automatic conferences call the WAC home. Texas Christian, at No. 22, being the other. But more about that later.

Even at this early date, being in the USA Today or Associated Press polls — and AP's version is two weeks away — is a significant foot in a very large and important door. A very lucrative one, too, if it turns out to lead to a berth in the BCS, where Boise State's take-home check last year was nearly $5 million plus many times that in reputation-building credits.

If you're UH, a place in the Top 25 is exactly what you need right out of the gate. The schedule the Warriors are saddled with would have made it tough for them to climb into the Top 25 in the season's first six weeks when the opposition is Northern Colorado, Louisiana Tech, Nevada-Las Vegas, Charleston Southern and Utah State. None of those schools had a winning NCAA Division I-A record in 2006 nor is forecast for one this go-around.

But a place in the preseason poll amounts to an early check-in and gives the Warriors a presence and a validation of sorts. Not to mention a chance to move up, albeit in measured steps as the teams above them play tougher competition.

Last year, it will be recalled, the Warriors didn't dent the Top 25 until Thanksgiving week, a 9-2 start into the season. Only after their 14th game, the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl victory over Arizona State, did the then-11-3 Warriors make it to No. 24.

Of course, now it is up to the Warriors to take the position they find themselves in and make the most out of it. Something you would figure they relish as they begin practice today. Their end of the deal involves taking care of things on the field, which would seem a do-able assignment heading into the late-season showdown with Boise State. Likewise for the Broncos, who should do it with a Fiesta Bowl-sized chip on their shoulders after finishing No. 6 in the USA Today poll last season but finding themselves a step back of TCU (21st in 2006) to start 2007.

If they both do that, then the winner of the Nov. 23 game figures to generate major thrust in the polls, a prime component of the BCS formula. A top-12 finish in the BCS ratings — or a top-16 finish that is higher than that of a conference holding an automatic berth — means a BCS invite.

Coaches like to say that it isn't where you begin in the polls that matters but where you finish. True, of course, but if you're UH and the WAC, being there at the finish line comes a lot easier with a good start out of the blocks.

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