HondaReport.com - Minutes to kickoff

UH football on the road is a beautiful thing for a devotee. Who still remembers UH's 45-20 loss at Wyoming? Of course, losing sucked, but the memory of the thrill, the voyage beyond, in the Rocky Mountains — UH plays Utah State today — takes me back two decades. Or three. Of course, UH won a few on the road, so all was not lost. Literally.

There's a chess match, or maybe it's more on the level of checkers, between my conscious mind and subconscious every now and then after the sun comes up.

Subconscious (lazy) me: Why? This ain't no fire alarm. The building isn't shaking (again). I'm gettin' my 8.

So I lay there, perfectly comfortable with the notion that it really could be after 10 o'clock. A few minutes — maybe a few hours, I have no idea — later, my eyes are open and the day of another pupule begins.

When you're tired, you can't remember what channel your TV was on last. I sit through several seconds of a TV commercial. I give up. It's a mystery. I surf the airwaves, perplexed that horse racing is all the buzz on ESPN, while college football has been relegated to ESPN2. As a kid, I would never, EVER have dreamt of so much football (is it 11 games every Saturday on the boob tube, or 12?). Yet, a horse race takes precedence on the major national sports network. Go figure.

Flip around a little more. Cartoons on PBS. As a kid, that never worked for me. Muppets and puppets, heck yeah. But not the cartoons. I click over to K5 (the home team). Informercial. The digital clock on my cable box reads 9:24. This is a blessed moment.

Soon, 9:30 arrives and I flick back to K5. Yes, informercial, I was go along with your unwelcome intrusion into my sacred world of UH football (and basketball) worship. Until the game kicks off at 10, I will smile inside and tolerate your cheesy, capitalist overtures. Actually, I don't even know what you're selling and I only turn to Channel 5 because of some bizarre thought that maybe there will be a pre-game show (never happens with UH football) or that, perhaps somewhere in my "early" morning mind that the channel needs to be up on the air and functioning so I can feel a sense of peace.

Hey, it was only two weeks ago that the earth moved a few times and not a single friggin TV or radio station could broadcast at all.

It's 9:44 now. I have an addict's grin on my face, not quite salivating in anticipation yet. The relief is sinking in. From my dinky little place, I can see Moi'ili'ili Quarry. I remember covering UH football every day back a few years when I was an internet UH fan site editor. I miss the morning practices (proof that I am co-dependent on UH sports as a drug) and the goofy replies from players to my universal-altering questions.

"Do you think June Jones (secretly) spends his quiet time playing Madden football online?"

"Is this a 'Simpsons'-watching kind of team or is 'Gilmore Girls' the guilty pleasure?"

There was a time, all too brief, when Damien graduates meant as much to the team as Saint Louis grads. Funny how college balances so many things out. Sorta like life. The nerdy twit turns into a CEO. The bully becomes a youth counselor. The kid who creates a numbers-based baseball game with playing cards and does "radio" re-creation PCL baseball (a la Les Keiter) winds up sitting in front of a TV, awaiting UH football more fervently than he ever did those holy Saturday morning cartoons.

Even for just one half, before work beckons once again, it will rock to be a fan again. Strictly a fan.