Rainbow Warriors

On October 23, 1909, a squad calling itself the Fighting Deans took the field against McKinley High School for the first game in the program's history — the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa had been open for two years. The name has changed twice since: Rainbows from 1923, Warriors from 2000, and Rainbow Warriors since 2012. Black and silver joined the original green and white the year the Warriors name arrived.

The 2007 season is the one still cited in Honolulu. Under head coach June Jones and quarterback Colt Brennan, a Heisman Trophy finalist, the team went 12-1, climbed to twelfth in the BCS rankings, and reached the bowl season as the only unbeaten team left in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Jones had already delivered a Western Athletic Conference title in 1999; the conference was won four times in all, in 1992, 1999, 2007 and 2010, before the move to the Mountain West Conference produced a West Division championship in 2019.

For 45 years the team played at Aloha Stadium, until structural damage and the cost of repairs shut the venue down for good in 2020. The Rainbow Warriors have played since 2021 at the Clarence T. C. C. Ching Athletics Complex in Honolulu. Fresno State remains the fixture the fans mark on the calendar first, a rivalry known locally as the Battle for the Golden Screwdriver.

Timmy Chang, who once held the school's passing records as a player, now coaches the team that plays in a stadium seating 15,194.