Cale Ramaker's Blog

If I was a baseball player I'd be batting .500. You see...I predicted that Hawaii would get the spam kicked out of it by Georgia at the Sugar Bowl. (Note the play on spam - a Hawaiian staple). I'm not sure the final score, the stats...even the dreadful second half that seemed to go on for eternity...come close to describing how out-matched the Rainbows were.

Hawaii had a nice, undefeated regular season....against teams like Idaho, San Jose State, Lousiana Tech, New Mexico State and so on...How many of those schools did you recognize as even having a football program? San Jose State does - and would've upset Hawaii if not for a last minute touchdown. And it took a dropped, sure touchdown pass by last-place Pac-10 school Washington for Hawaii to stay undefeated. Point is: Hawaii had no business playing in a BCS bowl against a SEC powerhouse in Georgia. The outcome was as expected.

That said...back to the batting .500 thing...I thought the same thing would happen to Boise State last year against Oklahoma. After all Boise State also plays in the Western Athletic Conference, or WAC, just like Hawaii. Most of us remember that Boise State shocked the world against Oklahoma.

The Sugar Bowl nuke-job by Georgia will hopefully put to rest the talk, next season, when some non-BCS school starts rolling through its patsy-conference schedule undefeated.

The players on Hawaii should be commended for a great season - in their conference. Hawaii has to overcome the brutal road games which require 6 to 8 hour flights in each direction from Honolulu. But keep in mind: most, if not all, of Hawaii's players were likely not offered scholarships at Pac-10 schools or maybe even those programs in the Mountain West Conference. And what you saw last night was far inferior talent getting schooled by a well-stocked Southeastern Conference program.