Talk Story
No winners and no aloha
at Saturday night’s gameTHE Hawaii-Cincinnati football game made Sunday's ESPN Sports Center for what the announcer said was "all the wrong reasons." What aired wasn't a highlight reel but a riot scene worthy of a British soccer final.
Sportsmanship is defined as fair play, courtesy, striving spirit and grace in losing. There wasn't much of that Saturday night. It was unfortunate that Aloha Stadium was the venue. There was no aloha.
The Sporting News reported nationally, "Punches and foul language replaced postgame handshakes for players from Cincinnati and Hawaii." The espn.com headline: "Fans gone wild."
"In my 40-year career, it's the worst game management that I have ever seen," said Bob Goin, Cincinnati athletic director. "It was terrible and the University of Hawaii needs to clean it up."
Citing too many Hawaii fans with sideline passes, Goin says Hawaii officials created an unsafe atmosphere. From our seats up in row 40, it seemed the Cincinnati team contributed to it with a series of personal fouls, including a late hit on Hawaii quarterback Tim Chang's already sprained left knee.
After he returned to lead a dramatic, game-winning comeback, that shot -- deliberate or not -- took Chang out of the game and put him in a wheelchair. He is questionable for next weekend's game with Alabama.
THE SPARK was a punch a Bearcat defender threw when backup quarterback Shawn Withy-Allen was kneeling to run out the clock.
According to running back Thero Mitchell, "One person threw a punch. That's all it took."
Bench-clearing brawls are almost routine in baseball, but baseball teams have only 25 players and few are buff 300-pounders in helmets and pads.
Hawaii suits up about 100 players for a home game and Cincinnati brought about 80, more than the usual 60-player traveling squad. If 22 guys going after a fumble impress you, imagine 180 surging together for a fistfight. It was scary.
Goin wasn't complaining about the postgame slugfest on the field, but what was going on up in the stands and on the sidelines.
"My wife was in the stands, and I feared for her," he said.
ACCORDING to Goin, Hawaii fans harassed Cincinnati cheerleaders, fans, coaches and players. What's more, he accused the Warrior mascot, Vili Fehoko, of being "totally out of control" and attacking the Cincinnati mascot.
The home crowd really got into this game in the fourth quarter as Cincinnati's offense sputtered and Hawaii's defense rallied to protect a one-point lead while 36,000 fans chanted "DE-FENSE, DE-FENSE ..."
The emotions on the field were hot, but they weren't fueled by a long afternoon of tailgating and beer-drinking. Those in the stands clearly were.
When Cincinnati players finally left the field after a five-minute scuffle, fans near the tunnel to the visitor's locker room threw cups of beer and bottles of water at them. Some Cincinnati players threw them back.
COACH June Jones downplayed the riot.
"It was unfortunate that it happened, but we scored one more point than they did, so that's all I care about at this point," he said. "I hope we can play them again, actually."
Cincinnati coach Rick Minter said, "Both schools should be ashamed of what happened." He said Hawaii's taking a knee, "which I thought was classy," was a contributing cause for the melee and instead of running out the clock, maybe there should be a concession rule -- as if.
We admire the service academies whose teams play hard but suck it up after the game, losers congratulating winners. Discipline builds character. Without it, there's too much testosterone doing the talking.
"We got a chance to get a lot of licks in," a UH offensive lineman said. "They lost the game, and they lost the fight."
Wrong. Hawaii lost, too.
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.