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Most college football players are absolutely certain of one thing: Unless it is picked to win every game, their team is underrated and disrespected in the preseason polls.
Once in a while it’s actually true.
I’m not ready to say that’s the case for this season’s University of Hawaii team, which is a reflection of the real-world job market right now: plenty of openings.
We do, however, know that no one can ever accuse the 2022 Rainbow Warriors of being overrated, since they’ve been projected to finish last in the Mountain West’s Pacific Division.
This team has just one direction to go — just as UH did 23 years ago.
“I can understand why people don’t think much of us. But I look at the league (as) not being that tough,” said Hawaii offensive lineman Adrian Klemm, after his team was picked to finish last in the Western Athletic Conference in 1999. “Other than USC, I think we have a good chance to win every game.”
That sounded delusional at the time except for the USC part, considering Hawaii had lost its last 18 games.
But Klemm turned out to be not far off the mark — after a 62-7 trouncing from the Trojans in the season opener, the Rainbow Warriors won nine of the other 12 games. A first-time college head coach led them to what at the time was the most extreme one-season positive turnaround in college football history.
The most prolific high school quarterback in the nation liked what he saw, and Timmy Chang signed up to join June Jones’ run-and-shoot.
Now, in his first year as a college head coach, Chang faces a somewhat different version of rock bottom.
UH won six games last year under Todd Graham — one more than the teams coached by Jones’ predecessor, Fred vonAppen, in his three years, total.
Hawaii’s returnees don’t have the “don’t know how to win” label; it’s just that there aren’t enough of them, especially starters.
Chang’s biggest challenges come from an exodus of experienced talent through the transfer portal, and the lack of a normal-sized stadium to attract fans and recruits.
Bob Wagner didn’t have to deal with those issues in 1992. Changing schools wasn’t as easy as changing clothes back then, and Aloha Stadium was still drawing more than 40,000 fans per game, even during a losing season.
But UH had won just one of its last eight games in ’91, and little or no improvement was expected from a team that was 101st of 106 teams in yards allowed. Hawaii was picked to finish eighth in the 10-team WAC.
The players were too busy working out in the offseason to notice what people voting in polls thought of them. If they did, they didn’t care.
UH started the season with road wins at Oregon and Air Force, and then at home over BYU. After a loss at Utah, the Rainbows reeled off four WAC wins before their only other loss, at San Diego State.
The team that was picked to end up eighth finished 20th — in the nation, according to the Associated Press poll. Hawaii went 11-2, winning the WAC and capping its greatest season to date with a victory over Illinois in the Holiday Bowl.
“We really put in a lot of work, together, and friendships developed,” said UH radio voice John Veneri, who was a sophomore slotback on that team. “It really was a brotherhood, and we became so close in the offseason that everyone trusted the guys next to them to do their 1/11th. You knew y0u could trust him, because you knew he put the work in.”
Veneri remembers quarterback Michael Carter leading lots of long runs around Diamond Head that summer. “Then we’d go throw balls,” he said.
It’s not like UH lacked for talent. Travis Sims rushed for more than 1,600 yards. Defensive tackle Maa Tanuvasa and kicker Jason Elam went on to win Super Bowls.
Even though they beat five other bowl-bound teams (before the bowl-game inflation era), Hawaii remained unranked in the AP poll at 10-2 at the end of the regular season.
“These things just aren’t very scientific,” Wagner said at the time. “Sometimes it’s all in a name.”
And sometimes a team is ranked lower because of the name of someone no longer on the team. Going into 1992, UH’s most exciting and well-known offensive player, slotback Jeff Sydner, had left early for the NFL.
College football is a lot different now than it was in the 1990s.
But at least one thing remains the same: There are many more moving parts — players who contribute to the overall effort — than in any other sport. And if they’re all moving in cohesion, it’s impossible to predict what can happen.
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