Rounding Down, CB to NY, Ratings

Rosemarie Bernardo has more details about those tickets. One of these quotes is not like the other.

The Sugar Bowl organization called UH and the Western Athletic Conference before UH qualified for the Bowl Championship Series with a request to reduce the number of tickets from 17,500 to 13,500.

Athletic director Herman Frazier said the decision to accept the reduced number of tickets was based on estimated ticket sales of 12,000 to 13,000. "That's why we said yes," Frazier said.

McNamara said, "Because we had no history with this type of event, it was impossible to calculate the demand from the season-ticket holders."

It was impossible to calculate demand, and yet...it was anyway. Here's what a season ticket holder has to say about it:

Loui said the administration lacked faith in season-ticket holders and mainland fans to support the Warriors in the Sugar Bowl. "This is the first time," he said. "This is our first outright championship. There are so many firsts for this team. And to not have faith, not only to season-ticket holders, but to fans abroad, to make efforts to make it to the game upsets me greatly."

In a Dave Reardon article about Colt Brennan being a Heisman finalist, here's what Brennan had to say:

"Why'd we do that? ... It's no surprise to me," Brennan said.

Not much else to say. At least not without a bunch of swear words

Back to the Heisman portion of Reardon's article:

Safety Desmond Thomas said Brennan's intangibles as a leader are as important to the Warriors as his physical skills.

"Personally, he deserves (awards)," Thomas said, when asked about Brennan's penchant for deflecting praise. "For one, you play harder for that guy, unconsciously, and for each other, and it becomes a team kind of thing. Not 'Let's win for Colt,' but, 'Let's win for all of us, the school, the community, for God.' "

"I got injured, fought through injuries," Brennan said. "If you take a look at my ankle (sprained Sept. 14) it still looks like a tennis ball. It looks bad, I fought through that all year, continued to make victories, got hurt again (a concussion Nov. 10 against Fresno State). But I bounced back from that (after playing two snaps at Nevada) and the biggest two games of the year were my best games."

More on the Heisman nod from Stephen Tsai:

"We'll let him go to New York," mused Terry Brennan, Colt's father, "but he'd better graduate. If he doesn't, he's going to be in a lot of trouble with me."

Ferd Lewis writes about Brennan's nomination, and puts it in context of this crazy season.

Hardly anybody imagined a bid to a Bowl Championship Series game. The Sugar Bowl might as well have been on Neptune as in New Orleans for the chances anybody gave UH of ever getting there.

But as much by the strength of conviction he displayed in passing up the NFL draft to return to UH for this season as by arm strength and precision passing, Brennan helped encourage us all to think big. He dared us to shoot for the stars in a manner unimagined previously.

Yesterday's announcement that Brennan had earned a trip to New York as one of the four finalists for the most prestigious award in college athletics, the Heisman Trophy, was but the latest and one of the biggest in a string of validations of his dream-big mantra. It was reinforcement for those — far and wide — who came to believe in the Warriors and their avowed pursuit of perfection.

Here's an AP article comparing the four nominees.

And finally, Ferd Lewis has news about some of the high ratings the late-season UH games pulled in for ESPN2.