RUSTON, La. — If the University of Hawai'i football team didn't awake this morning, and wonder what the heck it is doing here, 4,034 miles and four time zones away from home, well, it should have.

"We do (wonder) when we go there," admitted LaTech athletic director Jim Oakes, with a chuckle. "I'm sure they (Hawai'i) do the same when they come here."

UH and Tech are geography's odd couple as they meet today at 1 p.m. (Hawai'i time), the most distant conference opponents in NCAA football. Here, on the eastern most fringe of the Western Athletic Conference, UH finds itself farther from Manoa than if it had gone to some places in Russia.

"I'm sure 10 years ago no one would have expected Louisiana Tech and Hawai'i would be playing each other in conference games," Oakes said. "Yet that is just what has happened."

At the mercy of the ever-changing dynamics of conference realignment, the conference's two most most exposed schools curiously find themselves lodge brothers of necessity. Their only common ground being a need for conference affiliation and a wish to make the best of a nonsensical situation.

The question is: How many more trips like the one that brought UH here for today's game will there be? The answer to that is in Tech's hands more than UH's. For the Bulldogs have what few other schools in the WAC possess: options.

For most schools in the conference there is either the WAC or going independent which, in this day and age, really is no option unless you are Notre Dame or one of the service academies.

But Tech has what amounts to an open-ended invitation from the Sun Belt Conference to come on over anytime.

It is a move that certainly makes geographic sense. Not only is the Sun Belt headquartered in New Orleans, but two of its members, Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe, which is just 30 miles away, are in-state schools.

All of the Sun Belt's eight schools are closer than Tech's nearest WAC opponent, New Mexico State, which has 800 miles separating the two.

But Tech, having bounced around a few conferences and tried the independent route, believes the WAC, for all its geographic problems, has more prestige to offer.

After going 9-2 as an independent in 1997, when it beat Alabama and California, and didn't go to a bowl, Tech knows what it wants. After going 8-3 and beating Alabama in 1999 and not going to a bowl, Tech embraces the WAC, which sent it to the Humanitarian Bowl as the 7-5 conference champion in 2001.

"The WAC has given us a chance to elevate our program," Oakes said. "A chance to go to a bowl, a chance for national TV coverage and a chance to play the likes of Hawai'i, Fresno State and Boise State."

And, precisely because of that, a chance to separate itself from others in the area, and leave UH to wonder why.

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