Joe Moore and I told him it’s a good idea, if he had a time machine.

"I told him he’s 10 years too late," said Moore, the KHON-TV2 anchor who skirmished with June Jones over Rainbows and Warriors.

But Stephen Chinen doesn’t care. The 58-year-old elementary school counselor from Mililani is going to save the old nickname or go down trying. I’d say go down fighting, but that implies violence. Chinen’s plan is peaceful protest, but organized and in big numbers.

Yes, someone is finally stepping up. Here’s someone who cares enough about the nickname of the University of Hawaii sports teams to do something about it other than chirp as an individual. He’s going to pull together a group to show up on campus one day, with signs, a manifesto, a petition and the whole bit.

UH athletic director Ben Jay sounds firm with the decision he made last month to call all the men’s teams Warriors and the women’s teams Rainbow Wahine. But Chinen believes this is not a lost cause.

Most of us see it as a done deal. Chinen, an Army reservist who served in Iraq, says the battle’s still on since the change doesn’t officially go into effect until July 1.

"He can’t understand, because he’s not from Hawaii," said Chinen, who said he sent two emails on the subject to Jay that received no response. "I assume he’s going by what the deep pocket people are telling him.

"I’m hopeful that when he’s more knowledgeable about how the rainbow ties in to our history he’ll understand it better. If it’s for marketing purposes, remember New Coke?"

In the 1980s Coca-Cola changed its formula and public outcry called for a return to the previous recipe. For a while, there was New Coke and Classic Coke, and both made money.

"It was a great marketing coup," Chinen said. "Like they planned it from the start. But no one’s that smart."

I think Jay is smart … but yeah, no one’s that smart, and he doesn’t want to reverse fields and look wishy-washy, especially so early in his tenure.

It’s going to take a huge public outcry to gain any traction this late in the game. Some would say it’s already game over, but not Chinen.

He doesn’t know how many people he can get to join him in his march on Manoa, which he insists will happen.

"I’m all in, and I’ve been pro-Rainbow a long time," he said.

One challenge is that folks who want to save the Rainbow tend to be older. Some were in college during the 1960s, when campus protests were all the rage. But will idealists who went up against the man for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam all those years ago do the same for a sports team’s nickname?

"I told him I’ll do all I can to help (through publicity) if he gets a date. But I’m not going to go out and hold signs," Moore said. "I wished him luck. It will be interesting to see how many people he gets and Jay’s reaction.

"I’ll always call them the Rainbows no matter what the official name is."

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783 or on Twitter as @dave_reardon.