WAS IS IT A MIRACLE...OR, SIMPLY MAGIC?

A miracle is a religious event linked to God, while magic is a seemingly impossible act performed by humans.  I'm a kind of authority on the former, for I wrote a whole chapter in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity on a somewhat skeptical view of religion, featuring miracles.  To quote:

The University of Hawaii football team experienced a miracle in 2007. For the first time in history, it went undefeated, and was the only major one to do this that year. There are even religious implications, for the front page of the December 24 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser article written by Michael Tsai was entitled “Their Spirit Carries Them,”extending through much of page two. 

Based on what happened last night, I now place that miracle 2007 season as magic.  Magicians perform magic.  Shin Lim won America's Got Talent this summer.  I can't believe how he does those card tricks.  That is magic, something that fools you, but is reality.  Here is just one of his performances.  Somebody, explain to me how he does it!

So we come to last night at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu.  Hawaii's football team won six of its first seven games (their only loss was to Army at West Point, and I went to that game), then got embarrassed in their next four, by at least three touchdowns each time.  

Last week the University of Nevada at Las Vegas with their second string quarterback upset San Diego State at San Diego.  The star QB returned when UNLV visited Hawaii last night.  I thought UNLV would beat Hawaii by at least three touchdowns.  The Las Vegas bookmakers had Hawaii as a touchdown favorite.  Ridiculous, but it took magic for me to be wrong.

The game started as expected.  Halftime:  UNLV 21 - Hawaii 6, well on our way to another multi-touchdown loss.  Into the fourth quarter, the score was UNLV 28 - Hawaii 13.  With 12 minutes to go, Cole McDonald was replaced by freshman Chevan Cordeiro.  It was just about a year ago (18 November 2017) that Cordeiro (right) passed for 440 yards and three touchdowns, as St. Louis High School beat Kahuku in this same stadium 31-28 to win the state championship.

All Chevan did in those 12 minutes was to complete four of five passes for three touchdowns plus a two-point pass conversion, for 153 yards, leading Hawaii to a 35-28 victory over UNLV.  With that win, Hawaii will now play in the Hawaii Bowl on December 22.  This will not be official until it becomes official, but ESPN has a heavy say and needs the ticket sales.

Cordeiro is not Jesus Christ, just a freshman at the UH, so he must be a magician.  Give Bruno Mars some credit for leaving some magic dust during his 24K Magic tour at this stadium a couple of weeks ago.

Maybe I'll go see A Star is Born today.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it 90%/82% ratings.  Finally, we also won back the Golden Pineapple trophy.

Interestingly enough, Cordeiro was the understudy to Tua Tagovoiloa at St. Louis, now Alabama's quarterback and favorite to win the Heisman Award this year.  They are both 6'1" tall.  Alabama crushed Citadel, 50-17 yesterday.  Drew Brees, incidentally, is only 6 feet tall, has played 16 years, and just broke Bret Favre's record for most completions in the NFL.

Chevan was player of the year in Hawaii last year, winning the Marcus Mariota Award?  Who is he?  Marcus is a former Heisman winner who also graduated from St. Louis High School.  He is now performing minor magic for the Tennessee Titans.

Another Hawaii quarterback on the Heisman list is McKenzie Milton, from Mililani High School.  He has led the University Central Florida to another undefeated year, beating #24 Cincinnati yesterday 38-13 for ESPN's Game Day in Orlando.

It's only appropriate that on 24 November 2018 St. Louis plays Mililani for the 2018 Hawaii State Championship.  Their quarterbacks, Jayden de Laura, St. Louis junior, and Dillon Gabriel, Mililani senior, are the two best in the state this year.  Dillon just de-committed from Army.

As this is a solar blog site, I want to point out that the Florida Solar Energy Center is part of the Central Florida University.  When it opened in 1968--exactly half a century ago--it was known as Florida Technological University.  

I recall visiting FSEC in their early days when David Block was director, and the school enrollment was less than 10,000, about half of what we had at the University of Hawaii.  UCF is now the largest university in the USA with 66,000 students (57,000 undergraduates...Texas A&M has 53,000 for #2)  Hawaii?  We are just about where we were forty years ago, around 20,000 students.  

David?  He is about my age and recently retired as FSEC director.  Me?  I retired 20 years ago when I was director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii.  

That's the only photo I could find of David, to the right, at one of Kenji's Golf Safari.  Our leader, Kenji, is to the left.  We usually spend Cinco de Mayo at a Mexican restaurant.  If you think that all we do is drink a lot during our one week of golf in Napa Valley or Las Vegas you'd only be half right.  We do golf five or six times in a week.

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