Feature on how Hawaii is behind the Warriors

NOLA = New Orleans Times-Picayune
About Hawaii's support of the Warriors, Peter Kim, Honolulu businessman and former Alabama kicker, said:
"Everyone is saying, 'This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They realize, hey, this is more than just a football game." (NOLA)

UH fan and former OL for the 1972 NFC champions, John Wilbur said that the mania:
"compares to what it was like when I was playing for the Redskins and we made it to the playoffs. It's like any playoff team." (NOLA)

About the importance of the Sugar Bowl to Hawaii, HF said:
"It's Hawaii's Super Bowl. Our participation in the Sugar Bowl is going to be like Hawaii playing in a Super Bowl." (NOLA)

About the importance of the Sugar Bowl to Hawaii, Bobby Curran said:
"For many people here, this is the biggest thing to hit Hawaii since statehood." (NOLA)

Blaming the schedule for the poor attendance this season, Curran said:
"A lot of Hawaii fans were upset by the quality of the Hawaii schedule. People just weren't that gung-ho about watching teams like Northern Colorado and Charleston Southern." (NOLA)

NOLA Note "Some people attribute the poor attendance to the same thing that has kept undefeated Hawaii from rising to the top of the Bowl Championship Series standings: a weak schedule. Four of Hawaii's opponents this season had combined records of 6-42. And only two of 12 opponents had winning seasons."

Seeming to imply that his scheduling failure this season is the reason they are in the Sugar Bowl, HF said:
"We just had a one-year mishap that we were able to fix. Would you be sitting here talking to me if we had played USC the first game of the season and Michigan State the last game? I don't know." (NOLA)

NOLA Note: "But, Frazier said, one thing is certain: Hawaii will be in the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day."

NOLA Note: "Perhaps because of its size and isolation from the U.S. mainland, Hawaii tends more than many places to support residents who attain a national stage. When the teen-age singer Jasmine Trias appeared on the television show "American Idol," for instance, the community rallied behind her and helped drive her to a third-place finish. Likewise, Hawaii-born Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has a groundswell of support in heavily Democratic Hawaii. His $335,363 raised locally is far more than any other Democratic presidential candidate. By contrast, Hawaii's No. 2 money raiser, Hillary Clinton, has raised $42,141 here, according to the Federal Election Commission."

UH Manoa professor of psychology Elaine Hatfield said that the excitement for UH football is because Hawaii is a sports-crazed place with no NFL team, adding:
"No wonder people are excited." (NOLA)

About how Hawaii is culturally different from the rest of the US, Hatfield said:
"Hawaii is different culturally from the mainland. We are a lot more multicultural, for example, and that combines with isolation and size to ensure that we think of ourselves as 'special' and 'different." (NOLA)

About his travel hardships to get to the game, UH fan Regan Onikama said:
"I figure this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Win or lose, everybody's just excited to go." (NOLA)

NOLA Note: "Regan Onikama is typical. A Honolulu mortgage broker, Onikama plans to leave Honolulu on Saturday at 9 a.m. on a four-hour flight to Los Angeles. In L.A. he will switch planes for a two-hour flight to Phoenix, where he has another connection to Houston. After arriving in Houston at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, Onikama plans to rent a car and drive to New Orleans, where he hopes to arrive by 9:30 a.m. Sunday. Factoring in the five-hour time difference between Honolulu and New Orleans, that's more than 19 hours of travel time. Onikama's return flight leaves Houston at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 3 so he will have to leave New Orleans on Wednesday night to drive back.

Altogether, that's about 40 hours of travel time for the chance to spend about 80 hours in New Orleans, where Onikama says he plans to hit Harrah's New Orleans Casino and Bourbon Street and enjoy some good food."

About how his teammates are going to experience exotic New Orleans, Hawthorne said:
"They're going to see Canal and Bourbon Street, and they're going to go crazy. Some of the guys, they're going to see things that they've never seen before. It's going to be like me going to Hawaii." (NOLA)

NOLA Note: "As exotic as Hawaii has been for Hawthorne -- he took four semesters of Samoan, and Brennan occasionally calls audibles in Samoan -- Hawthorne believes New Orleans will be equally exotic for some of his teammates."

Asked about the irony of UH playing in the Sugar Bowl while Alabama goes to the Independence Bowl, Korey Reynolds said:
"I've been giving them a hard time. We're a little bit better than them this year." (NOLA)

NOLA Note: "The game also will be a reunion of sorts for Korey Reynolds, a freshman running back from Hoover, Ala. Reynolds has 10 old friends from Hoover coming to New Orleans for the game, including two former teammates who now play for Alabama. "

Warning his teammates to stay away from Bourbon Street, Hawthorne said:
"Bourbon will steer a lot of people wrong." (NOLA)

"We've got a chance to do something this team has never done before." (NOLA)