Some happenings so far at the WAC Football Preview:
- Things are starting to come together. Ivan Maisel of ESPN.com is interviewing Boise State's Ian Johnson. Maisel just came in from New York.
- A Honolulu reporter/blogger walks into a party. He is carrying a backpack. He greets Dick Tomey. The backpack hits Karl Benson's wine glass. The glass goes flying, landing on Tomey's khaki pants. The wine is red — as red as Tomey's face. As red now as Tomey's pants.
- Conor Caloia, the WAC's new marketing guy, is pretty amazing. He's ironing the table cloth that will be used for the media check-in station.
Caloia: Anything wrinkled you want ironed?
Me: My body?
- The WAC also has large framed action pictures of each player who is attending. At the entry to the interview room is a big poster of Brennan and Boise State's Ian Johnson.
- One of the cool things is the WAC made personalized room keys. On the front is the WAC logo, the back has a breakdown of each conference's bowl winning percentage the past five years. The WAC is No. 1 (.611), followed by the ACC (.600). I bet the ACC doesn't have its logo on room keys.
- Benson said Washington State, Oregon State and Arizona State turned down $1 million paychecks to play in Hawai‘i on Oct. 20. ESPN offered to show a UH game on Oct. 20. If one of the three teams accepted, it would have received $400,000 from the Pac-10 and $600,000 from UH.
http://blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com/index.php?blog=9