One of the magical elements of college football openers is how unpredictable they can be. With the annual personnel turnover, the unpredictability becomes semi-predictable.
An earlier article, “Storm Clouds”, opined that 5 teams were in for disappointing campaigns. Hawaii’s Rainbow Warriors were on the list. An awful 3-9 campaign was a prelude to a slew of exiting transfers. Rats abandoning a sinking ship, I thought. OOPS!
One of the transfers was starting QB Dru Brown. Brown skedaddled to Stillwater where he hoped to be the starting QB for the Cowboys. No dice there. An inexperienced Cole McDonald took the reins Saturday evening and played like the second coming of Colt Brennan. Certainly better than Brown ever played for Hawaii. Sure, Colorado State is a terrible defensive team but it is not easy to amass 617 yards of offense against air.
One of many reasons I was down on Hawaii was the transition to a new offense, the “run and shoot.” McDonald ran it brilliantly, aided by some terrific play calling. Everytime a quarterback draw was called, the CSU defenders could not wait to swarm into the backfield as McDonald took off.
Maybe the Odyssey underestimated the karma associated with Hawaii’s new helmets: Outlining the geography of each of their islands is VERY cool.
With as good as both Hawaii and Wyoming looked on Week 0, the Mountain West appears to have more depth than most thought. Who knew??