Well, it's been a few days now from the Sugar Bowl debacle and I've had some time to absorb what happened. Had a pretty fun debate about perspective on the game with Phat Booty, Maximus, and WW last night about it too.
To be brutally honest, I was embarassed. All year, Hawaii was fighting criticism that they don't belong in the BCS, that they're a gimmick offense, that they've played a pathetic schedule and all we did was prove all those naysayers right. This was our opportunity to prove something to the nation. To show, hey, a WAC team does belong in the BCS just as much as anybody! But no, sadly, that was not the case.
I've been watching UH football ever since hanabata days and I'm pretty positive that the Sugar Bowl was the first time I walked away mid-game. Every UH game I attend, I stay till the final seconds. Every game on TV, I watch till the final snap (yes, even when Boise and Fresno laid 70 on us during the Timmy Chang years). But for some reason, I couldn't stand to watch the game anymore at some point during towards the end of the 3rd quarter.
Sure, Georgia probably would've made anyone look terrible the way they played that night. They came out fierce, hungry, and prepared. They're right up there with USC, LSU, and Ohio State as far as who's the best team in the country right now. But they didn't play anyone else. They played us. If they had played an Oklahoma, an Illinois, a Florida, whoever, and won by the same score, that loss wouldn't have meant as much as it did to Hawaii. Those teams all come with long traditions of winning complete with national championships. A loss this year in a BCS bowl is no big deal. They'll just reload and be right back in it next year.
But for Hawaii, this was a rare oppportunity to show something to the nation that for the most part, doesn't really know who we are. Sure, they've seen some highlights on Sportscenter but did they really pay attention? Probably not. Mainland people just don't care about the WAC. Ever read sports magazines or check scores on websites? The WAC is always bunched in the "Other Conferences" category along with the Mid-American and Conference USA. That's what we are. A side note. UH home games start too late for most fans on the mainland to give a rip about (besides gamblers trying to chase) and even though our last 4 games got national coverage on ESPN, we did not look entirely impressive in those games, despite pulling off the wins.
I guess that's where my feelings for this game come from. I thought of it as our opportunity to prove ourselves to the "big boys" and to really make the country pay attention to what we've got going on out here. But we failed to do that. It's kind of funny and sad reading the paper the next day that the best thing Georgia players could find to say about us was that "Colt Brennan took a licking and kept getting back up". Sounds more like condescension than a compliment to me.
Even national sports radio hosts were getting in on it, calling us "frauds" and "major disappointments". One radio host called the Sugar Bowl a "joke of a game". Those comments were salt in the wounds, yet sadly accurate. Phat Booty was telling me last night that his take on the national feedback of the game was not that Hawaii played so poorly but that Georgia played that well and that there wouldn't be too much of a negative perception on Hawaii football. I really hope so.
But I think Hawaii's performance really hurt the chances of a mid-major team climbing up the rankings for at least the next year anyway. There are a lot of BCS conference supporters out there and do you think they'll vote a mid-major team in the Top 10 again as easily? Don't bet on it. They're gonna fight us small time teams all the way to avoid another matchup like this year's Sugar Bowl. (But with UH's schedule next year which includes Florida, Oregon State, and Cincinnati they won't be able to deny us a high ranking if we go undefeated again).
Man, I so wish that last year's team had a chance to play against Georgia. Just imagine what we could've done with Samson Satele, Tala Esera, Nate Ilaoa, Ikaika Alama-Francis, Mel Purcell, et al. I think THAT would've been a great game.
Now...with rumors that June Jones is as good as gone to SMU, I wonder what's in store for the Warriors next. Do we rebuild this team that June built and start from scratch? Jeez, that's a real scary thought considering who we play next year. I know that this is tangential to my original stream of thought, but man, does Herman Frazier need to go or what? This is guy is so pathetic. Talk about a guy who just sits on his ass! This guy just makes so many mistakes. And now his legacy will probably be the guy who didn't put soap in the showers and who let the most successful coach in school history leave...for SMU of all places! I've never been the biggest JJ fan but there's no denying what he's done for this program. I've always had issues with his game coaching, his cavalier attitude, and player control but the man won games, and that's the bottom line. It'll be sad to see him go, but I hope we can get a decent replacement if this rumor does indeed turn out to be true.
Well...I guess that's it. I just felt like I needed to air out my feelings on the game. And thanks to my really interesting and fun talk on the topic last night with friends, I was able to release all of the thoughts I had been thinking about the past few days and put those words to expression.
In any case....no matter how I felt about this one particular game, they did have a magnificent season and really helped to unite this tiny state of ours. And they did it with class. GO WARRIORS!
Leaving for Lake Tahoe tomorrow, Heavenly Resort to be exact. I've been there a few times before but that was way back in college days.
