I am Hawaii's best kept secret in sports, but the Rainbow Wahine are a close second.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: The Rainbow Wahine volleyball team is good. Really, really good.

But I won't launch into my usual hyperbolic stream of superlatives, because the Rainbow Wahine aren't that kind of team.

They don't have a Kim Willoughby.

They don't have a Tee Williams.

They don't leave your jaw on the floor with effortless feats of athleticism (the occasional Amber Kauffman jump notwithstanding. In fact, I think Amber might be the reason they say white men can't jump, not white people. Because that girl can fly). They just play good volleyball. Really, really good volleyball.

I watched the 2009 Rainbow Wahine play for the first time last Friday and was astounded at the way Dave Shoji's squad worked together as a team. They had a hand in front of every Pepperdine kill attempt (I say attempt because Pepperdine only converted 38 of 126 hits, which translates to a kill percentage hovering between .120 and hide-the-women-and-children awful). On the rare occasion Pepperdine managed to hit a ball past the formidable UH block, the Wahine had a player in perfect position to make a dig.

The Wahine served well.

They set well.

They passed well.

The only thing they didn't do well was extend the game long enough for me to drink a second beer.

(On that note, I don't know if it's a Wahine Volleyball thing, a general volleyball thing, a reflection of the current down state of the economy, or my complete inability to remember how much beer used to cost, but beer prices were about a dollar or two cheaper on Friday than I remembered at Stan Sherrif Center events. Whatever the reason, this made me a happy. Really, really happy. Jim Donovan, I salute you!)

The only question left in my mind about the Wahine after Friday night's utter dismissal of an incredibly talented opponent was, why haven't I heard more about this team?

Sports media tends to focus on the style over substance. Chad How-stupid-do-you-have-to-be-to-change-your-name-to-a-grammatically-incorrect-Spanish-word Ochocinco's impromptu Lambeau Leap replayed two hundred times on Sportscenter with nary a mention that the Cincinnati offensive line somehow blocked well enough for Cedric I-most-likely-gained-four-pounds-since-you-started-reading-this Benson to rush for 140 yards.

(I think it's probably in my best interest to stop using the hyphenated word jokes before I receive a slew of emails calling me Justin single-handedly-ruined-a-literary-device D'Olier.)

Because of this myopic obsession with flash and pizazz, we tend to overlook simple excellence. And that's a shame.

The primary goal of team sports is to seamlessly integrate a group of individuals into a unit whose collective talent and ability far exceeds their individual skills. And the 2009 Rainbow Wahine have a lot of individual skill.

Aneli Cubi-Otineru hits the ball so hard you think it's going to pop.

Brittany Hewitt and Amber Kauffman form an impenetrable wall up front.

Kanani Danielson has more athleticism than you would ever imagine could fit in a 5' 10" frame.

And Jayme Lee is just so cute, you want to give her a hug. (Seriously. She's looks like she could fit in your pocket. If she wore wings, you'd swear Tinkerbell was playing librero. It's awesome.)

But the way the girls work together on the court is truly something special. They achieve a level of harmony and unity not seen in a UH uniform since a certain record setting Quarterback was tossing touchdown passes to guys in dreds.

The 2009 Rainbow Wahine don't just talk about playing as a team, they truly embrace the concept. It's about time we started embracing them.

Jay Cutler Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

To this day, I have never anticipated the release of a movie more than when George Lucas released Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in May of 1999.

The movie was released on a Wednesday, but I was a senior in High School with only a few weeks left before graduation, so my buddies and I left school early to see the first showing. We waited in line for six hours. I won a pair of gold earrings in a Star Wars voice impersonation contest for my impression of Jabba the Hut. By the time we got our seats, the lights dimmed, the curtains raised, and the John Williams soundtrack came blasting through the speakers, I could have used a change of underwear.

But then the movie happened.
Little Anakin happened.
Jar Jar happened.

To put it bluntly, the movie sucked. It was a poorly acted, poorly edited, ill-contrived, turd of a film that bore little resemblance to its predecessors (or my expectations). I tried to justify and make excuses for the movie (“The pod racing sequence was mildly enjoyable.” “The five minutes of Darth Maul didn’t totally suck.” “Maybe Jar Jar gets eaten by a Rancor in the sequel.”), but I couldn’t escape the fact that it was a let down on virtually every level.

In fact, it was so bad that it completely soured me on the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. I didn’t see Episode 2: Attack of the Clones until it came out on video. To this day, I still haven’t watched Episode 3: Last of the Bastard Children (paraphrased) despite insistence from all my friends that it is the best of the three. As far as I’m concerned, the prequels never happened (just like the second and third Matrix movies and Michael Jordan’s comeback with the Wizards).

Sadly, I’m beginning to feel that way about the 2009 Chicago Bears football season.

All summer long I had a fever, and the only prescription was more Cutler. I read every article I could get my hands on. I wrote a piece for the JBorhood that wavered between ecstatic and first-time-I-got-laid levels of excitement. I put a Google News alert on “Jay Cutler”. I even bought a new set of knives because they were Cutco. (Ok, not really, but I thought about it.) By the end of the pre-season, my obsessive devotion to all things Cutler would likely have qualified as grounds for a restraining order.

Suffice to say, I have never been more excited for a regular season Bears game than I was this past Sunday Night. First game of the season, in prime time, against the arch-rival Packers, with the Bears first legitimate starting quarterback since the Lincoln Administration, by the time the Bears kicked-off, I could have used a change of underwear.

But then the game happened.
Brian Urlacher happened.
Jay Cutler happened.

By the time Monday morning rolled around, the Bears were two games behind their main division rivals (by virtue of head to head tiebreaker), without their best defensive player for the season, and wondering if Jay Cutler is really just Rex Grossman with a diva complex. With the defending Super Bowl Champion Steelers coming to town on Sunday, Bears faithful are preparing to channel their inner Cub fan and “wait til next year”, less than two weeks into a season many thought would end in a Super Bowl.

Sigh.

I’m sure Bears fans won’t receive any sympathy from Patriots Nation, who lost Tom Brady to a season-ending knee injury in the first half of last year’s opening game.

I’m sure Lions fans would trade places with Bears fans in a heart beat as they wait for the Lions to break their current 18 game losing streak.

But, frankly, no other group of fans knows the pain that Bears fans are suffering today. Because, after 59 years of offensive ineptitude, 59 years of ignoring the most important position in all of sports, 59 years of embracing the forward pass like Kanye West embraces grace and dignity, the Bears were finally supposed to have a Quarterback.

And maybe they still do. Calling the Jay Cutler era a regrettable period after only one game is laughably premature even for me (and that’s saying something).

But Sunday was supposed to be the first day of the rest of our lives. The day we could finally sit at the big kids table. The day we could laugh at other teams’ Quarterback controversies. The day we could buy a Bears jersey for a player that didn’t play linebacker, running back, or return specialist. The day when the words “woefully inefficient” made us think of American automakers, instead of our beloved football team.

Instead, we’re left wondering whether our defense can rally around each other and overcome the loss of their physical and emotional leader and whether our franchise savior can throw the ball as effectively to our own team as he can the opposition.

For the record, I think they will.

The Bears defense is too deep and too talented to let the loss of one player, no matter how important, affect their ability to harass opposing offenses.

And, Jay Cutler only has to make mild improvements to win the hearts and minds of Bears fans. It won’t take a miracle to make us forget about Rex Grossman. The Bears Quarterback legacy isn’t exactly Star Wars. If Jay Cutler’s touchdown to interception ratio resembles the number of times I’ve sworn I’ll never drink tequila again (two, as of last week Friday) instead of the percent of last week Friday I remember, he’ll look like Citizen Kane in comparison.

So I’m going to tune in to Sunday’s game against the Steelers. And I’ll watch the next week’s trip to Seattle. Hell, I’ll even stick around for the following game against the Lions (because it’s always fun to watch the Lions get thrown to the lions).

But if the Bears haven’t turned their season around by that point and Jay Cutler hasn’t stopped his noble attempt to honor the legacy of Rex Grossman, I’ll watch Star Wars Episode 3 before I watch another Bears game this season.