By Paul Honda
hondareporttop10@aol.com
Sunday, Sept. 3, 2006

The Farrington Governors were down 7-0, midway through the fourth quarter at Kunuiakea Stadium.

After a wondrous stalemate, Kamehameha had just broken the ice on a Jordan Rego touchdown run. The Governors, however, were barely ruffled. They began a monumental march across the lush field. Coordinators upstairs in the press box were only slightly premature when they began roaring out loud.

"Coach, when we score, we gotta go for 2," one assistant coach hollered. The Govs were barely past the 50-yard line, but momentum had shifted and everyone in the stadium knew it. "This ain't no league game," he continued. "Let's go for 2. Don't care 'bout no polls."

Oh, yeah, the polls. Farrington had risen nicely to No. 6 in last week's Star-Bulletin Top 10, deservedly so after one-sided wins over Waianae and Moanalua. But what the assistant coach in the press box doesn't realize is, voters pay more attention to quality than quantity.

Case in point: Kealakehe walloped Ka‘u, a program that barely fields a team, 69-0 on Saturday. The Waveriders are 2-0 and coming off a Big Island Interscholastic Federation Division I title. Voters don't seem to notice. Kealakehe has never beaten a Top 10 team, and if it happens this season, it would probably happen in the state tourney because of the league's overall weakness. It is primarily a D-II league with some smaller schools stuffed up to play in D-I.

By the time Farrington had scored on a sweet 16-yard toss from one Elijah (Filifili) to another (Lesu), voters didn't really need to know precisely how the game ended. The fact that the two teams were so evenly matched in the trenches, in the backfield, in the flats, on the sidelines — the 7-6 verdict did little to separate the two monsters from mashing about in the poll.

What also mattered little were the peaks and valleys, the yardage, the 16 combined sacks, questionable spotting of footballs or anything else besides the fact that these two gigantic, fast teams are playing outstanding football in the early stage of the season. Voters notice that for sure, a lot more clearly and vividly than a 69-point wipeout.

So, if a coach cares about polls — they're as nutritious as whipped cream, after all — that's fine. If he doesn't read them at all and never has, that's good. Whether a team settles for a tie or risks a loss by going for a win, that has nothing to do with rankings. In the end, good coaches do what's best in the situation, what's best in the long run.

Wins do matter to voters, so if a coordinator implores his head coach to go for 2, it is indirectly another way of trying to move up the polls. Nobody coaches a game that way, but the results when polls are conducted reflect exactly that. Win, you move up. Lose, you move down ... unless you lose to a higher-ranked team by a close margin. That's what happened when Kahuku lost to Punahou in Week 1: the Red Raiders remained right there at No. 2, and have since.

Nearly as important as wins is quality of play. Farrington's blow-for-blow battle with Kamehameha has substance. Kealakehe's walloping of a tiny school? It's a quick way to lose respect.

In the end, Farrington coach Randall Okimoto did the right thing by kicking the PAT. The kick missed, but there were still more than 5 minutes left, and his team got the ball back in the final minutes.

"You play the game," Herman Edwards once deduced, "to win."

For the first time in a while, the Farrington Governors were in position to do that against their cousins on the hill. Big-time football is back at full strength in Kalihi, but imagine league titles for Kamehameha, Farrington and the third neighbor, Damien (Division II).

Now that would be something really worth hollering about.

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