Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Honolulu Lite
NOBODY expected the University of Hawai'i Warriors football team to win every game this season. But we also didn't expect team members to hold their breath and turn blue because they were angry with the media and fans. Warriors picked
the wrong battleTo be charitable, the Warriors didn't look too hot in their first game against some little mainland community college flag football squad whose name escapes me. To be uncharitable, the Warriors sucked. And, yes, the fans booed the hometown team, which showed a distinct lack of class and likely a distinct overindulgence in beer.
As an alumnus of a college whose football team was so bad its theme song was "Suicide is Painless," I understand the need for liquid anesthesia to get through an afternoon slaughter. But no matter how bad our guys did, we never booed them. Sure, we laughed, ridiculed and derided them, but we never booed.
Considering the amount of adoration and cult worship that was heaped on the Warriors from every side last year, it is not surprising that a little bit of it (OK, a lot of it) went to the players' heads. But there was no way they could live up to the hype.
If the media reported that UH Coach June Jones had been spotted walking on water off Waikiki, the only question Hawaii residents would have had is: was he wearing zories or going barefoot? Pulling a last-place team up out of the pit and placing it at the pinnacle of the Western Athletic Conference in one year is tough; walking on water is easy.
Most people didn't believe that Hawaii would never, ever lose another football game. But the suddenness and utter proficiency of their loss against Portland State (there, it came back to me) was stunning.
And that's when everyone began behaving badly. The fans booed. The press howled. And the players clammed up. They refused to talk to the press because they had been betrayed. I guess when you wear a lot of heavy pads, you don't get a chance to develop a very thick skin, but the players' petulant reaction to criticism was embarrassing.
Get a grip, boys. Don't believe your own PR. The fans are fickle. The media are a pack of jackals. But you guys are just playing a game. You aren't working on a cure for cancer or trying to establish peace in the Middle East. You run up and down a field chasing a funny-shaped ball.
There's an old saying: "If you can keep your head while everyone around you is losing theirs, then you don't really understand the problem." No, wait. That's not it. If you can keep your head while everyone around you is being a bunch of jerks, then you won't look like a jerk, too.
There's another saying: Watch out what you ask for; you might get it. The press is pretty good in the petulant department, too. You stop talking to reporters, then they'll stop talking to you. And they'll keep not talking to you long after you've decided to talk to them again. Believe it or not, television newscasts can carry on very well without some jock on air saying, "We didn't execute very good out there today, execution-wise."
Instead of refusing to give interviews, you should have said, "You know, we really stunk up the field last week. You think it looked bad from the stands, you should have seen it from where we were! Peeee-uuuuuu. It's just a game, but we know we can play better than that. As soon as Coach is done walking across Hilton Hawaiian Lagoon, we're hitting the practice turf."
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite