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Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
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In the end, Northern Colorado gets everything it deserves
JUST a few more words, while it's still fresh, before we move on, as we should, and talk about other games. Let's dwell again, for a few more minutes, on that special, spontaneous thing that happened at the end of last Saturday night's win.
The applause.
It was appropriate. It was perfect. It took you aback as it was happening. I kept looking back to see exactly why these people were applauding. Was the Hawaii team coming? No, this really was for the Bears, walking in. The UH fans really were showing some aloha to the opposing team.
As the Northern Colorado Bears trudged to their locker room, beaten and bruised, the Hawaii fans in the end zone above their tunnel stood and saluted them. They stood and they clapped and they cheered. They did it for a long time, until all of the UNC players had come off the field. They thanked them for coming. They thanked them for playing this game.
It was classy. It was perfect.
This is what you want people going back to the mainland talking about. Hawaii had run them up and down the field, beaten their brains in, and then the home fans greeted them like family at the end of the game.
This is how Hawaii should want to be known.
This should be a new tradition. If there are going to be more scores like this, there should be more gestures like this, too.
If Hawaii is going to be a real big-boy, Top-25 football program, then maybe it's time the fans rose to the occasion and started acting like it. And maybe they are.
This was special.
Jerry Glanville once told me that he loved getting booed because they don't boo nobodies, but he didn't get that quite right.
When UNC ran onto the field before the game, you could hear it. Not as loud as it has been lately, but it was there. A just-out-of-Division II team that had gone 1-10 last season, coming thousands of miles to give Hawaii a bail-out 12th game, and some bozos feel compelled to boo.
There are nobodies involved. But they're not on the receiving end.
It's probably hard for most anyone not to get caught up in the pro-wrestling atmosphere that's surrounded UH home games in recent years.
Which brings us to this story. In Sunday's column I mentioned new UH chancellor Virginia Henshaw. One problem. Her name is "Hinshaw." I made that mistake, first, because I'm an idiot. But her name only came up at all because I pointed out that had Herman Frazier made the presentation with the game's title sponsor, there likely would have been an, um, "ovation." It was noteworthy that UH chose to introduce Hinshaw instead.
But if I don't go out of my way to stress that point I don't make that mistake.
That's what happens.
But hopefully we are all being led into a new era, to a higher level of sports discourse.
There have been times at the stadium when it seemed like some people have gotten the idea that showing some class is a sign of weakness.
On Saturday night those clapping for the Bears as they headed for the locker room showed us that the opposite is true.
