A few thoughts
1) New Year's party
For New Year's, I went to Kakaako Waterfront Park for the New Year's party. It's like a block party, but with grassy hills between stages. There were multiple stages and of course fireworks.Unfortunately, right after the New Year started, a few guys started fighting. It wasn't a play-fight either, it was rage-filled punches. And it wasn't one-on-one! Security wasn't evenly distributed throughout the park, so I had to look for security to break up the fight!
After security intervened, things were smooth again!
------
Here are my YouTube videos from the New Year's event
"Bottled Water: the Ultimate Party Drink"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzC2mleuXic
2) College Football Playoffs!
Finally, there's a playoff in Division 1-A college football!
For a century, college football just determined a champion based on 1 out of many bowl games! So you had years where you had 3 undefeated teams, but only 2 can go to a so-called "national championship" bowl game! This made college football "championships" a joke, and a reason why I used quotation marks around the word "champions" and "championship".
Since a lot of people loved the pageantry of bowl games (especially the classic ones like the Rose, Cotton, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange............................. and the "high-and-mighty" Hawaii Bowl), the NCAA decided instead of abolishing the bowls, let's just use some of the bowls as semi-finals in the playoffs! And those who had winning seasons but can't make the playoffs can still play in a bowl game. It's a win-win for everyone.
Yeah, there's only 4 teams in the playoffs this year. This year is just a test-run. Since the ratings were so good, you can bet the playoffs will expand to 8, and even 16 teams in the future.
-------------
Here in Hawaii, since the UH football team hasn't been great lately (thanks to the "geniuses" who "retired" Coach Mack and replace him with Norm Chow), nearly everyone has been jumping on the Oregon bandwagon. While Oregon has long recruited players from Hawaii, this time, it has a great star QB from Hawai --- Marcus Mariota.
Now, Mariota's family has been telling the media that UH didn't offer Mariota a scholarship! Whoooooooah! Wait a minute there! Yeah, Oregon offered first! But it wasn't as if UH was deliberately ignoring a star high school QB.
Let's talk some facts! Oregon made its offer in the SUMMER BEFORE Mariota's high school senior year! And get this ...................... Mariota wasn't even a star in the high school scene, he wasn't even his team's starting QB! Understandably, UH was reluctant to offer a scholarship to a second-string QB! And get this....................... this was BEFORE Mariota's senior year in high school. He had a one more season to prove himself worthy of a UH scholarship!
Plus, Mariota wouldn't have been able to sign the papers to play for a college team UNTIL the February of his senior year. He could've waited circa 8 months from summer to the following February to see if UH was willing to offer a scholarship!
And Mariota did start and did have a great senior season in high school! His team even won the state championship!
But Mariota didn't want to wait for UH to offer, and Oregon offered first!
Give Oregon its credit for being able to detect late bloomers among high school players!
But please, Mariota's family, stop acting as if UH totally ignored Mariota when it was officially signing day! Just be honest and say Oregon offered first!
-----------------------
While I'm not going to wear the Oregon colors anytime soon, I did like it when the Oregon players taunted their semi-final opponent's QB (Jameis Winston) of Florida State with "No Means No".
(watch here)
So the Oregon players were accused of "poor sportsmanship". But they DID STOP when their teammates said "cut it out"
But did Jameis Winston stop when his rape victim asked him to stop? NO!
And unlike Oregon (which expelled basketball players accused of rape), Florida State and the Tallahassee police department covered up for Jameis Winston
http://www.thenation.com/blog/193985/reality-their-own-jameis-winston-rape-and-seminole-fandom-florida-state
No one other than Winston, his accuser, and several of Winston’s teammates—who were present at the alleged assault—know whether the Florida State quarterback is a rapist. But we now know enough to be appalled by how Florida State University and the city of Tallahassee handled this entire ordeal. We know that police refused to investigate the original accusation of rape for months and that the school did not interview Winston about the incident for over a year. We know that the police—eventually pressured by the press into investigating the incident—had financial ties as security workers for the Seminole Boosters club. We know that Jameis Winston did not testify at his own student conduct hearing to defend his own innocence except by issuing an appalling written statement where he called the accuser a liar, violated her confidentiality by stating her name repeatedly and posited that this was all happening because she was miffed that his door kept swinging open while they were having sex.
We also now know that Winston did finally talk in his student hearing after being cornered by retired Judge Major Harding. Harding turned directly to Winston and asked, “In what manner, verbally or physically” did he believe his accuser actually consented to sex? Winston’s lawyer’s said that their client did not have to respond, but Winston could not resist. The Heisman trophy winner said that his accuser supplied consent not by any affirmative statement but by “moaning.” Meanwhile his accuser testified, “I remember being raped.… I remember pleading with him to stop clearly.… I remember one of his friends telling him to stop and saying, ‘She is saying no clearly’…. I tried to struggle and resist him.” A victim’s advocate who met with the accuser the next day also testified that her mental state was consistent with someone suffering from the post-traumatic stress of a sexual assault.
So as far as I'm concerned, those Oregon players treated Jameis Winston better than he treated that girl!
-------
Congratulations to the Ohio State Buckeyes for winning the 1st REAL national championship in big-time college football!
Before beating Oregon, Ohio State beat Alabama. For years, the talk was "SEC rules, Big Ten going down"! Well, the Big Ten adjusted to the changing times. As for the SEC, they've been winning "national championships" without a playoff for years! Well, what goes up does come down!
My main hope in college football now is for Hawaii to join the Pac-12(or whatever #), go back to the glory days, outshine Oregon, and be able to strongly compete against the likes of Alabama, Florida State and Ohio State in the playoffs!
And hopefully, Hawaii can be as good as Oregon (and Boise State) is in detecting late bloomers among high schoolers, and not have to rely too much on players who got kicked out of bigger name schools (ie. like that QB who got kicked out of Colorado a decade ago, hint, hint)
