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Monday
Evening QB
WHAT a perfectly staged public relations and marketing coup the University of Hawaii athletic department pulled off last week. UH scores with
logo, nicknameNot only did UH generate reaction from thousands of fans and several special interest groups with its new logo and design, but the Warriors got some of that invaluable nationwide exposure.
It's sweet to dominate the media and water cooler chatter locally. But you're talking huge bang for the buck when you get a chunk of that big-time air-time and high-circulation ink.
Who cares that Hawaii was ripped coast to coast for changing its football team's nickname from Rainbows to Warriors?
The marketing genius who came up with this one deserves a medal -- and there are a lot of folks who'd like to do the pinning.
This was spectacular, probably unprecedented: UH managed to appear totally insensitive to gays and indigenous people in just one move (not to mention some longtime season ticket-holders and quite a few former Rainbows).
Mark Gray, host of ESPN's overnight radio show, talked about the flap Saturday morning. As a former sportswriter who covered the Atlanta Braves, he knows all about the offensive nickname issue.
Then there's Nick Cafardo's column in yesterday's Boston Globe:
"Now, the football team ... will be known as the Warriors. Hmmm. That invites a whole new set of problems, doesn't it?"
Personally, I don't care. Rainbows, Warriors, whatever. I've always been much more interested in how the athletes and teams perform than about their team nickname or uniforms.
I do know this, though. The Hawaiian activists who made an issue out of the Warrior mascot got taken for a ride. How hypocritical is it for UH to say it shelved the mascot in the name of cultural sensitivity, and then come out with a logo that has Hawaiian icons in its design?
I still think it's a silly issue for activists to be involved with, but no one deserves to be treated in such a duplicitous manner.
Now the gays and anti-gays are taking their cuts. Vocal local leaders for both groups jumped on their soapboxes and held press conferences over the weekend.
At least I got a good laugh out of this one. Mike Gabbard called for "homosexual activists to publicly apologize for stealing the 77-year-old UH rainbow logo."
Priceless.
THE brilliant campaign to usher in the new logo actually began Tuesday, when the doors to the Stan Sheriff Center were left unlocked. Photographers (and whoever else wanted to) could sneak in and see some of the "secret" designs -- left uncovered -- on the basketball floor a day before the big unveiling/foot-in-mouth fest.
We know those doors were left unlocked on purpose -- a sloppy foul-up at the University of Hawaii? Impossible.
This was a shrewd PR move. By making it possible for the newspapers to get pictures early, the new logo got an extra day of media exposure.
Well, the bottom line is the nation's been reminded that the University of Hawaii has a football team. And everyone wants to be the first on the block to get something with that weird-looking "H" on it.
Of course, everyone also now thinks we're a state full of regressive homophobics who disrespect our native people.
You can't buy that kind of publicity.
Is there a spin doctor in the house?
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii from 1977 to 1998,
moved to the the Gainesville Sun, then returned to
the Star-Bulletin in Jan. 2000.
E-mail dreardon@starbulletin.com