SUGAR BOWL
RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Ryan Grice-Mullins, left, of Hawaii spoke at a Sugar Bowl news conference yesterday while fellow receivers Jason Rivers and Davone Bess shared the stage.
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Their second chance is a big 1
NEW ORLEANS » It is a room full of second-chance guys and players nobody wanted.
It is also a room full of articulate and talented young men who will represent their school on one of football's biggest stages Tuesday.
Colt Brennan and Davone Bess had brushes with the law. Ryan Grice- Mullins won just one game in high school. Jason Rivers dropped out of school for a year. Hercules Satele was a great high school player who didn't get a lot of attention from colleges.
Now they are stars on the University of Hawaii football team, key members of the nation's most productive offense.
And here they all are, at a Sugar Bowl news conference, speaking with candor and confidence about their successes and their shortcomings.
Coach June Jones referred to the Warriors as the Bad News Bears earlier in the week, a ragtag group of misfits taking on the establishment.
"I'm a convicted felon," Brennan said matter-of-factly, bringing up the well-documented dorm incident at Colorado four years ago that sent him to jail for a week and a recently completed term of probation.
"But life's about second chances and making the best of them," the Heisman Trophy finalist said. "That's what this team is. It's real. Just like my story, this football team is real. We've come back from 21 down. I think the nation is going to love to watch and experience this football team."
The irony is the team full of guys who got second chances had absolutely no room for error when it came to on the field this season. One stumble, one loss and the Warriors would be nowhere near New Orleans -- or any other BCS site -- right now.
"A lot of people are asking, 'Why are we even here?, ' " Bess said. "We can play at this level."
And the Warriors, now ranked 10th in the nation, barely made it to 12-0 against a schedule many thought they would run roughshod over when Brennan decided to return for his senior year after UH went 11-3 in 2006. But Hawaii needed overtime for two wins, and came back to win in the final minutes in three other games.
"We're the underdog, we're that Cinderella story," Brennan said. "The way Hawaii recruits is it looks to those kind of kids. Adam Leonard (knee injury in high school), Davone Bess, Ryan Grice-Mullins. Imagine trying to get a scholarship when you're 1-22 in high school. And he did, and look at the career he's had."
RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan finally escaped the media crush with the help of a van driven by UH sports media relations director Derek Inouchi.
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Like the others, Grice-Mullins is intelligent. He has to be on the playing field.
"You can't be a dummy in our offense," he said. "The most important thing is that all or our routes are reads."
Although the Warriors are enjoying unprecedented success including top-10 status, Brennan believes most college football fans still know very little about the team.
"I don't think anyone has sat down and really watched us," he said.
Bess said Hawaii coming from the WAC, a midmajor conference, and Georgia having its roots in the powerful and prestigious Southeastern Conference means nothing.
"This is the first year Hawaii's on the map (in college football)," Bess said. "None of that matters -- when the lights come on, that's when you find out."
Rivers knows what's at stake for the fans -- pride.
"These are the kind of games I live for," Rivers said.
"We are aware of the magnitude of the game, but we have so much fun," he added. "There's so much love coming from the state, we don't feel any pressure."
Brennan has been the biggest recipient of that aloha. Three days before his last game in a Hawaii uniform, he was asked what he hopes for his legacy.
"I want to be remembered for being that really awesome Hawaii quarterback, that it wasn't the numbers, it was how he played the game," he said. "I want to be remembered as someone real who told it like it was."