Sidelines
Rainbow story
is what college
football is aboutMAYBE it's time to tell the story again. Maybe it's time to dust off this old feel-good legend and bring it back to life. But brace yourself. First, your fair warning. This is yet another column about the rainbow.
I tell you this up front, so you can stop reading right now if you want to and skip straight to "Sherman's Lagoon."
I'm thinking about it myself. I write too many of these. It's exhausting. It's aggravating. It's too much. But this issue isn't going anywhere. So here we go again, from the beginning, let's retell this wonderful story. It's important. Because too many have already forgotten. And the rest never will. They will never forget.
THE ISSUE ROARS back to life at the drop of a hat. I wrote that new Hawaii athletics director Herman Frazier is expected to drape Asia in green and black (the new "official" school colors). The e-mail response to this offhand comment was irate and instantaneous:
The last I heard the school colors for UH "R-A-I-N-B-O-W-S" is GREEN and WHITE, NOT black!!!
Maybe to END my distaste for the new 'WARRIOR' designation, maybe WE should go BACK to the original "FIGHTING DEANS." Who knows what the school colors were then?!? Yes, it still FESTERS in my WHOLE BODY!!!
He goes on to insinuate that those responsible for the name change because they weren't comfortable being Rainbows are protesting a little too much, if you get his drift. But this is a family newspaper, so let's go to the big finish:
Sorry, just venting my GUTS!!!
Hey, UH needs "new" blood to revitalize it, BUT they should show some RESPECT for OUR traditions.
DAMMIT!!!
Then there was old Rainbow Harold Naumu of Kauai, who spoke with our Dave Reardon last week about pay-per-view football: "It's terrible. UH is going to the dogs. First going from Rainbows to Warriors ..."
Even the governor slipped the other day. At the recent Hawaii Bowl news conference, Ben Cayetano leaned over to June Jones and said, "June, congratulations, I know that the Rainbows are going to be able to step up to the plate. And in the first game, I'm going to make a prediction today that it's going to be the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors vs. uh, whoever."
I feel the same way.
WHOA, HOLD ON Warrior converts. Let's not fight. There is too much animosity in this debate, and not enough magic. I promised you a story. Too many people have forgotten the story.
It happened long ago, in 1923 to be exact. Hawaii's Fighting Deans staged an epic 7-0 upset of Oregon State, and a rainbow appeared over the field. It must have looked, it must have felt, much the way it did that December day last year when a brilliant arc, a perfect rainbow materialized in the Aloha Stadium sky after Hawaii had punted BYU.
And in those early days, every time there was a rainbow, the team won. Every time there was a rainbow in the valley, the team won.
Chicken skin.
This is the best story behind a nickname in the annals of sports. This is genuine college football lore on a Notre Dame level. This is something people hold in their hearts.
And no reason is good enough for trying to take that away.
It wasn't really the Jesse Jackson Thing or the Mahu Thing, and it certainly wasn't the We Need a Distinctive Identity Thing (Hawaii Rainbows was already one of the country's most distinct, identifiable and unique name brands).
It might have been partly the Marketing Money Thing, but I think it was mostly an excuse to wear black and try to sound tough.
Which is ridiculous.
College football is supposed to be about magic and pageantry and history and heart.
Besides, if you want a tough name, Rainbows is a tough name. To say it isn't is an insult to the nearly eight decades' worth of players and teams that wore the title with pride.
In fact that very criticism of the name makes it an even tougher one, the toughest nickname in all the land. You need to be something special to carry it off.
People on the mainland don't get it, people on the mainland make fun? So much the better.
After all, as the great Johnny Cash told us, the toughest man in the world is the one who grew up as a boy named Sue.
Or June.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com