RMs cover football landscape

The fields are vastly different.

But for Inoke Funaki, the lessons learned in the mission field go with him every time he steps on the gridiron.

"You learn so much through experience, so many things that you can't learn in school," says Funaki, a third-string quarterback for the University of Hawaii in 2007. "I try to always remember the things that I learned and apply them to my life and also to football."

On New Year's Day, Funaki and his Warrior teammates took the field in New Orleans at the Sugar Bowl as only the third team from a non-Bowl Championship Series conference to compete in a BCS game. Six days later, another third-string quarterback who served a mission, Andrew Hatch, watched as his Louisiana State University Tigers won a national championship on the same Superdome turf.

Returned missionaries were certainly well-represented this college football bowl season.

Going from full-time elder to full-time student-athlete is not unique to football programs in the state of Utah. Players on bowl-participating teams like Hawaii, LSU, Boise State, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Oregon have gone from laboring as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to competing within some of college football's most energetic and passionate environments. Along the way, they've experienced the benefits and challenges of service and encountered numerous opportunities to share stories from their previous field.

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Being a football player at Boise State University means being part of something unique — and not just because of the blue turf the Broncos play on.

"We're the center of attention when it comes to athletics and entertainment, and everyone kind of clings to that," said Dallas Dobbs, who served a mission from 2001 to 2003 in Salta, Argentina.

As a member of the Boise State program, Dobbs was on the sidelines a year ago for the 2007 Fiesta Bowl — a captivating victory over Oklahoma that long will be remembered for its memorable plays and improbable swings in momentum. Dobbs, a special-teams player at the time, made one tackle.

"I've never gone from thinking that we lost to we won so many different times," he said. "It was the best game I've ever been a part of."

This year, Hawaii tried to replicate Boise State's success story. The Warriors played their way into the Sugar Bowl with an undefeated regular season but lost to the Georgia Bulldogs in a lopsided 41-10 contest.