Sidelines
Love means never
having to say sorryAH, vacations. Everybody should have them. A chance to relax, or, if you're spending the first week of January in Nebraska visiting my wife's family, a chance to relax while freezing. But the sports world never stops. So while I continue to thaw out, let's take a look at some of the things that made news while I was away:
>> UH failed to comply with a conference rule in certifying academic eligibility for the Hawaii Bowl, and now Fresno State is raising heck:
First, there is no way Hawaii could have complied with this rule in the time frame allowed. No argument there. It is a well-meaning rule that, under the circumstances, was impossible to follow.
That doesn't mean you ignore it.
Here is what I get out of it. UH knew it couldn't abide by the rule, the WAC knew UH couldn't abide by the rule, so Hawaii decided to just go ahead and break the rule. Better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
The only problem is that if UH is asking for forgiveness it's quietly. In private. To the outside world it sometimes looks as if June Jones and Hawaii do whatever they want, without accepting blame, almost with a hint of defiance. And perhaps that's true. Nobody is telling us it isn't.
You want to know why Jones isn't going anywhere? This is one of the reasons.
Team gets in a disgraceful bench-clearing brawl? We didn't do anything wrong, we will not change.
Flout a (hopeless, impractical, impracticable) conference eligibility rule?
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
Of course Jones will give his guys the benefit of the doubt. He should. He does. (And it should be noted, as I failed to before the new year, that he deserves a lot of credit for suspending a key player for a bowl game.)
But it's Herman Frazier's call to say what Hawaii will do or who will or won't play, especially since he and everyone else knew for months that this problem was coming.
And over in Fresno (yes, with almost a week more to work with) FSU followed the unreasonable rule, even to the point of not giving their guys the benefit of the doubt. A handful of Bulldogs, including Fresno State's best defensive player, didn't play. Not necessarily because they'd failed or were ineligible, but because Fresno State, grudgingly, resentfully, bitterly, followed the letter of the law.
Given the time frame WAC bowls operate in, this rule obviously needs to be re-worked.
But this didn't need to be the last-second crisis and public-image miscue it became.
And now we'll see what the WAC does to convince its members that there aren't two sets of rules.
>> Despite repeated proclamations, the Hawaii Bowl was not only not the highest-rated televised sports event on Christmas Day, it wasn't even the most-watched bowl game that day and yes, it was the 17th-rated bowl overall:
I don't know what you're talking about.
>> UH basketball wins with an incredible effort in one of the best Rainbow Classic finals in the tournament's history, only to turn around and lose at Boise State:
Here we go again.
But that's life on the road, life in the far-flung WAC. This is what it's like when a team is this good, this much fun, with expectations this big -- anything less than perfection is an absolute disaster. Perhaps an off night in Boise on a January road swing -- hey, everybody has those -- will hurt the Rainbows less in the long run than would a loss in an anticipated "statement game" against a good team.
With its Rainbow Classic showing, Hawaii proved it can win the big ones.
But this season's margin for error just got slimmer.
>> There were controversial calls in big football games, and the NFL even admitted that its officials blew it in the 49ers-Giants game:
Yes, it backfired on Miami, but the old credo remains -- when in doubt about pass interference in the final minutes, GO FOR IT.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com