Hawaii-born QBs square off for football glory

Friday will be a big day in college football for fans here, and it has nothing to do with the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors.

Starting at 4 p.m. on Fox, two Hawaii-born quarterbacks will face off against each other in the Pac-12 Football Championship Game in Santa Clara, Calif.: Marcus Mariota of third-ranked University of Oregon and Anu Solomon of No. 8 University of Arizona.

Mariota, a junior, is a Saint Louis School graduate who is up for the Heisman. Solomon is a red-shirt freshman who graduated from Bishop Gorman High in Las Vegas, to which his family relocated from Alewa Heights.

The two faced each other only once before, on Oct. 2, when Solomon’s Wildcats beat Mariota’s Ducks 31-24. In Mariota’s three years as the starter at Oregon, he’s lost only four games, two of them to Arizona.

So find a good seat and hang on. It promises to be a good game.

Free speech now more free on UH campuses

The settlement of a lawsuit over curbs on free speech at the University of Hawaii at Hilo was welcome news this week.

Two students sued after being stopped from distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution in protest of federal surveillance practices; they were told their protests were restricted to a specific zone on campus.

In the settlement, UH agreed to change its policy at all campuses. Although officials can create "forum" areas for students and the public to use with permission, those are additional dedicated zones. As long as they keep it noncommercial and don’t block passersby, students can speak and assemble "in all areas generally available to students and the community."

Not to diminish the applause for the settlement, but it’s stunning it took a lawsuit to bring about such a policy on any university campus.