THERE I was, half asleep on the sofa, dreaming University of Hawaii president Kenneth Mortimer and myself were doing soul grinds and big 540s over the alligator pit, when the conspiracy theory hit me like a diamond bullet. Hey, Mortimer, your
disguise doesn’t fool meYeah, I know, anybody my age thinking about taking a skateboard to the rails and doing a bio-540 -- that's when the feet are even with the head during a one-and-a-half spin above the ramp -- is extremely off, especially when my biggest trick as a youngster was sitting on the skateboard as I went screaming down the driveway and into the street. But hey, you never know when greatness will emerge from a dream.
Several weeks ago I was well into the midnight hour of an X-Games repeat on the Deuce -- part of a summer project to watch sports I knew nothing about -- when the theory first introduced itself to my pointy head.
Some 16-year-old kid was executing an out-of-this-world 720 jump over the spine, just as the X-Games announcer deftly dropped in a remark about a nice UFO front-side grind.
A little voice went off in the back of my head, but I didn't really catch the significance of it until I fell off the couch late Saturday night during a repeat performance of the X-Files.
THE image of Mortimer, who was executing a jump over the Guillotine Bar dressed in a suit and tie, was replaced by agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
It was the one about the Navaho Indians discovering a buried boxcar brimming with dead aliens on their reservation. In this episode, Cancer Man breaks this news to Mulder's dad, who is later shot before he can tell Fox of the ghastly alien plot that he helped devise.
That's when my nutty professor conspiracy theory came to light. What if Mortimer is just one of many academic-minded aliens disguised as university presidents sent here to planet Earth to destroy college football?
Sound extreme? Well, think about it before you pass judgment. In the last few years, the presidents have lowered the number of football scholarships, raised the academic bar to record NCAA heights and decreed that gender equity is more important than bottom lines.
Football coaches have gone to the streets to sound the call that things can't last much longer in their current condition, but they are being portrayed as crazed citizens carrying posters that read, "The end is near."
There are similar signs of devious destruction being posted closer to home. Who was the head of the Western Athletic Conference Presidents Council in 1994 when that body ignored the athletic directors' recommendation to expand to 12 teams in favor of 16?
Mortimer.
That ill-advised decision four summers ago has led to the death of the WAC as we know it and has helped place the Hawaii football program in harm's way.
SEASON ticket sales for the Rainbows have dropped nearly 40 percent since Mortimer touched down at UH in 1992. In a span of five years, the Rainbows' football program has gone from first to worst with little hope of any immediate improvement before the 20th century draws to a close.
I plan to contact X-Files creator Chris Carter today to see if he agrees with my theory. I recently wrote to Carter, saying I believe Cancer Man is behind the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
It forced President Clinton and the rest of the country to focus on Whitewater, and to forget about the proposed billion-dollar legislation against the powerful tobacco companies.
So far, no response.
I'm sure the university presidents disguised as aliens will do their best to discredit my theory. But I am undeterred. I know the truth is out there and I'll discover it, even if it means taking it to the streets and doing a flat-spin 540 off the jump box.
Paul Arnett has been covering sports
for the Star-Bulletin since 1990.