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The first thing you notice, even before the sweeping 12th-floor view, is a framed copy of a newspaper front page from the 2006 Rose Bowl on the office wall entryway.
Your attention turns to an array of pictures and autographs — the "Miracle on Ice" 1980 Olympic hockey semifinal, Notre Dame Stadium, the Boston Red Sox, an inaugural "Sports Illustrated" magazine cover, photos of various college football coaches …
And, then, you realize, for all the surrounding, eye-catching sports memorabilia, you are standing in the downtown office of a DUI attorney, Paul Cunney, for a press conference.
That instead of being the break from crime news, sadly, sports is smack dab in the middle of the police blotter this summer. Up to its hip pads in it, actually.
THE ACCUSED are in the headlines and their DUI and criminal attorneys have the floor, if not the microphone.
DUI charges against three University of Hawaii football players and, now, the jailing of the program’s most celebrated quarterback, Colt Brennan, have put a dizzying and disappointing spin on what is usually a placid, ho-hum July.
It is never too soon to start warming up for the start of the football season. But not this way.
Not when we are comparing the severity and relative rehabilitative worth of punishment meted out by football coaches at Notre Dame and Hawaii for the crimes of their players instead of the on-field merits of their respective teams.
Whatever happened to the days of simmering preseason quarterback controversies? The kind that didn’t involve discussion of blood-alcohol limits.
Remember when the hot topic of conjecture among fans a week before the opening of the Warriors’ training camp used to be the rebuilding of an offensive or defensive line? Not the identification of a substance found in someone’s car?
We’ve heard more from Hawaii head coach Norm Chow this summer about suspensions than the prospects of giving powerful Southern California, the season-opening opponent, a game. Of course, he’s been asked more about it, too. Like every day.
AT THIS POINT you suspect Chow would relish an on-field meeting with Heisman Trophy candidate Matt Barkley and the Trojans more than another one of those early morning, "sorry to tell you this, Coach, but …" phone calls. Even on a family vacation in China the news found him. The growl was probably heard in Tibet.
UH’s preseason football camp is finally scheduled to open Wednesday and, for most of us, it can’t come soon enough.
Of course, there is a court date for the punter two days later.
You know what kind of a summer it has been when you feel compelled to ask a lawyer about the items that adorn his office walls to take the edge off the sports news of the day splashed across his desk.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
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