---

UH’s best QB usually
is not here

THE speculation that Hawaii's quarterback of 2005 may not have participated in these just-concluded spring drills may mean that there's a blue-chip gunslinger out there ready to ride in and save the day.

Or it may just mean that it's easier to believe something like that about a guy who isn't here yet.

It's that old bird-hand-bush theory. In reverse.

It's human nature, isn't it? It's easier to dream without reality in the way. Look around. All those orange shirts on this spring's UH practice field were brilliant until they got here. They were all going to become stars ... right up until the newness wore off.

They suddenly became human once they'd been here about a year.

Then, they were just guys in orange shirts.

Then, they had flaws you could see.

Sometimes it seems the longer they've been here the less special they become.

I can remember when Jeff Rhode had all the tools and when Ryan Stickler reminded some of Jim Kelly and when Kainoa Akina had already started a season in Division I.

I remember when the name Rolovich -- as in Jack, Rolo's bro -- had everyone all atwitter.

Now they're all even (along with Inoke Funaki, the former Kahuku QB), except for Stickler, who switched positions and isn't even on the roster anymore.

Any one of them could emerge -- but none seems to have done so yet.

"Right now it's hard to tell what Coach Jones is thinking," said Tyler Graunke, who said the evenness motivates them all.

And Graunke, too. Maybe he illustrates this pretty well himself. Who is Tyler Graunke?

Well, I thought he was Taylor Humphrey.

It was Humphrey who seemed to have the early leg up among last year's quarterback recruiting class. He'd broken Ken Dorsey's passing record at Miramonte High School. He was a film junkie who seemed to want to eat, sleep and breathe June Jones' run-and-shoot.

Then, around midseason, it was the "athlete" of the class, speed QB Brandon Satcher, who was receiving a lot of buzz as a future prospect to start.

But now, who's left among them? Graunke. And he's even, and contending for the job.

"I have high expectations for myself," he said.

Good luck to him. But his endurance while his classmates have fallen to the wayside only underscores the theory. Ben Franklin said it long ago: "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."

Big-time recruits can become one of the guys once they get here. And often do.

And then there they are, an army of orange shirts, all suddenly no longer exciting and new. They are quantifiable now, human, real. They are strengths and weaknesses. They are more -- and less -- than projection and dreams.

All even, with the Next Big Thing coming in.

So maybe there's a guy who isn't here who can come in and be the savior.

But maybe he's the savior because he's the guy who isn't here.

» I'VE BEEN A big cheerleader for UH's latest rash of ticket promotions because, let's face it, Hawaii is currently in the position of needing to get people in the stands any way it can. And these promotions have been inventive, mostly fun, seemingly well-executed and pretty much an all-around good idea.

But yesterday's announcement of the 2005 football promotions ... well, a few of them struck me.

There's "the team's home opener against two-time defending national champion USC on Saturday, Sept. 3, has been designated as a 'Green-Out' game and all UH fans are encouraged to wear green attire."

Good plan. Um ... any word on if the home team will be doing the same?

Then there is, "UH's meeting with conference rival Fresno State has been designated as 'Family Night' ... "

"Fresno State" and "Family Night" in the same sentence? This has "international incident" written all over it.

And of course, "the contest against Big Ten member Wisconsin on Friday, Nov. 25, will be 'Season Ticket Holder Appreciation Night' ... "

Yes, you'd better do something special to thank those who choose to pay premium prices. Because if the current trend continues, there will be people around them who will probably have paid promotional ones.