Go to the University of Hawaii football game Saturday.
Yes, I write this completely sober. It’s too early in the holiday season for me to be drunk on egg nog, and too early in the morning for beer (and, no thank you, Michael Keaton in “Mr. Mom,” I’ll pass on Scotch at this hour, too).
On the heels of that reference from a 1983 movie, I’ll take a chance on a quaint, perhaps outdated sentiment: Support your team, through thick or thin.
Where are all of you thousands and thousands of fans who say you kept going to the games through the vonAppen years that included the winless 1998? I think you’re the same million who saw Wilt Chamberlain drop a hundy, and Chaminade drop Virginia.
You couldn’t pay me to be there in ’98. I mean that literally. I was on a different land mass.
On Sept. 3, 1998, I tried to complete a mission at the lua at the Alehouse in Gainesville, Fla., before Hawaii’s opening kickoff to Dick Tomey’s Arizona team. By the time I returned to my seat, the Wildcats had returned it for a TD and UH’s 0-12 season was underway.
Nine days later at The Swamp I saw Florida tear apart the Northeast Louisiana Indians 42-10. The last time I’d seen that squad, it was the previous November, beating UH 23-20 at Aloha Stadium with a perfectly executed hook-and-ladder.
The point to this rambling? A couple: 1) Things have been worse, and they got better. 2) The Northeast Louisiana Indians are now the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks. That makes UH’s season finale an opportunity for revenge for something that happened when today’s players were in diapers.
Yeah, it’s true that even if you combine their wins the Warhawks (1-10) and Warriors (2-10) would still be way short of bowl eligibility after whatever happens Saturday night.
Phil Steele went out of his way to tweet that he won’t watch this monumental matchup of bottom feeders. Maybe it’s because Max Wittek, his preseason pick as best quarterback in the Mountain West, is out of action.
If a junkie like Steele won’t even watch, why should you go?
>> As great teams can make each other unwatchable, the opposite is true and two bad teams can play an exciting, competitive game. Use my trick: When watching two bad college teams, I pretend they are great high school teams.
>> You’ve either paid for a ticket already, or you can easily get one free. More than 8,000 no-shows last week? If you can’t remember where you left your tickets, make some calls.
>> There’s no high school football, the 4-0 UH basketball team is out of town and Wahine volleyball is idle.
>> No traffic.
>> The reason you said you stopped going, Norm Chow, is no longer there.
>> I hear some of you say you’ve checked out because players and coaches have. Do it for those who are still playing hard (which is most of them) and have the past four years. Never mind the guys who blew off the alma mater after the Fresno State game. Be there for the eight players who DID stand out there after another blowout loss. Remember, this isn’t what they signed up for either.
>> And mostly, you won’t be lying later when times are good and you claim to have gutted out 2015.