Aloha Stadium looks like a spaceship as you approach it from a distance. This is funny, mostly because once you get inside, the aesthetic–not futuristic in the least–makes it hard to remember it’s not still 1979.

But sports lovers, and not just those who had 2007 University of Hawaii football season tickets, can tell you a thing or two about living in the past. Ask a Cubs fan the importance of the 1908 season, or Eagles fans why World War II brought them closer to Steelers fans. College hoops devotees can trace our collective March Madness to the moment three decades ago when Larry and Magic met on the hardwood in middle America. Even bandwagon Red Sox fans can explain why one seat in section 42 is painted red in a sea of green.

For as much of an in-the-moment, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pastime as sports spectatorship is, the culture of fandom mostly oscillates between “remember when” and “wait until next year.” Loyalty to one’s team is measured in championships not won and allegiance is tested by how many offbeat stats can be recalled from seasons mostly forgotten.

We celebrate our fandom ritualistically. Disguised as superstition, the way we love our favorite teams is more ceremonial than anything else: the growing of the playoff beard, the donning of the lucky shirt, the boisterous singing of fight songs, the standing and flailing for the formation of the wave. At the most basic level, it’s a comfort to those passionate about sports to root fandom in the familiar. For as inevitably volatile as a team’s performance is over time, there are some things that always stay the same.

At Aloha Stadium, those constants are in the wide swaths of orange, brown and yellow that make up the general color scheme. They’re in the trade winds, which carry the scent of fried oil over the crowd. In an era of too-polished corporate-named venues, the dated quality of the structure has a familiar charm, with winding ramps from field-level all the way up to the nosebleed section that make it look like something out of the opening sequence of 3-2-1 Contact.

These days, going to Aloha Stadium is like going back to high school. It feels smaller than it used to, but the essence is just the same. That essence, in this case, smells like hot dogs, which may well be the quintessential comfort food of the sports-watching set (beer is a beverage, remember). They serve as a reminder that the appeal of comfort food is less about what you’re eating and more about where you’re eating it.

Often when we talk about “comfort food,” we’re referring to dishes that fall into at least one of three categories: warm, scoopable and gooey. Think: macaroni-and-cheese, mashed potatoes and chicken pot pie. We also tend to think of comfort foods as being those dishes we eat, or once ate, at home. That’s often true, though, if only because most of our eating is done at home over the course of our lives. Ultimately, comfort food is about repetition. If we eat something enough, it becomes an inextricable, edible symbol of the place where it is eaten, or the event it commemorates. Turkey at Thanksgiving is the most obvious, stereotypically American example. Depending who you ask, though, hot dogs at Aloha Stadium are right up there.

Not everyone feels this way, of course. Ask around and plenty of people–stadium employees and fans alike–will point you in the direction of the gyros, from a relatively new Greek food stand that offers some of the healthiest options for game-day grinds. We hear they’re good, and we believe it, too, but we know we’re not the only ones who couldn’t imagine eating a salad in the stands. The hot dog is the most popular item for sale at the stadium (boiled and roasted peanuts come in at a close second). Local employees for Centerplate, the hospitality company that manages food service for Aloha Stadium, estimate more than 3,000 hot dogs are sold at each UH football game. One year at the Pro Bowl, they even sold out.

But the success of this game-day staple doesn’t mean there aren’t attempts to mix it up every once in a while. The aforementioned Greek food has been a hit. Other forays into ethnic foods: Not so much.

Centerplate’s Dara Barcelona says the “wackiest” food that made it onto stadium menus was an octopus dish, “tako balls.”

“Although a rave in Japan,” Barcelona wrote in an e-mail, “it did not take off at the stadium.”

There’s still plenty of regional flavor to be had. Saimin, a favorite at Aloha Stadium, would be a surprise to some visitors, even those fans in cold-weather cities. Fried noodles, malasadas, kalua pig, poi mochi dumplings and crack seed are all readily available to UH fans. Not so elsewhere. As much as we appreciate the diversity of culinary offerings (particularly those that make us feel at home), there’s nothing quite like the game-day trio of a hot dog, a bag of peanuts and a big, cold beer.

Maybe it’s because, when all is said and done, the UH football experience is one that’s comprised of simple and reliable parts: The rules of the game, the National Anthem that’s always performed before kickoff, the fluorescence of stadium lights that make every crowd, as a whole, look alike. As fans, we partake in the predictability of game-day. All that’s left to chance is what actually happens on the field.

For the record, the snappy-skinned hot dogs at Aloha Stadium aren’t just good, they’re perfect. But they actually don’t have to be. In the same way that a team can lose and the sun can bleach red seats to pink, it’s not always the quality of the thing that we love, but the fact that it’s there, year after year, game after game, for us to love it.

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