 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, how you doing? Gorda the Texar here. Hi, Bacchi Talk, another exciting episode of Hi Bacchi Talk. We've been out not on the air for a while as the fundmeister, Rick's Mike Gohos here, and I have been doing a lot of traveling this year. Yeah, we found our way back though. We found our way back, we're back for a little while. But our show is going to change a little bit. We're going to be down to two shows a month now, the middle of the month and the end of the month. Don't tell my wife, I'll have more honey dudes. Yeah, so I can't let her know because I'm still going to show up during my regular thing on Wednesdays because it's kind of like my one day of weekend. And lo and behold, our guest calls us at 30 minutes or so before the show, emergencies come up, and Sam Moku, who was supposed to appear with us, he's the Acting Athletic Director at Hawaii Pacific University, was going to join us in talking about our theme today, which we're going to continue with, which is a concept that's being thrown out there, annual university intra-state baseball pre-season game. How's that? Say that's my attention. I know, but that could just be so much fun. That could be a ton of fun. Yeah, and I think it would be fun for the players but also for the fans. For the fans, the families, and a whole number of things. And this is really in its infancy. It's just discussions. I don't even know if all of the universities are even talking about it at this point. I know why Pacific University is because I've been talking with them as an alum. And we're just going to do some feeling right now to see if this could possibly get some transaction, no, traction. Traction. So pull up a chair, grab a libation, we've got a little chit chat about that. And if you've got any comments, you can give us a call at 808-374-2014. Send us an email at the ThinkTech website if you're really interested in seeing more about this. I think, like you said, we've got some ideas on how this could be a lot of fun. And maybe after you hear some of our thoughts, maybe you have some thoughts too. And just email us at ThinkTech. And if we get a groundswell of individuals that think this is a good idea, we might be able to get some kind of committee formed and so on and start talking to the heads of the universities and such and see if they'd be really interested in doing this. Yeah, we're talking about the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University, BYU and University of Hawaii, Hilo. And they've got baseball teams and see what we could do with that and such. It could be a fun weekend. It could. And some of the other sports have had what, inter-scholastic volleyball, I think BYU and HPU, I think they used to play that. Don't know if they still do. But yeah. Because we don't have, if you think about it, what? So that would be intercollegiate, I guess. Oh, intercollegiate. There's the term. You see, you're a college graduate. You know this stuff. So intercollegiate, the type of an event, we don't have a thing that we wrap our hands around that much anymore. I mean, high school football is huge here, as we all know. And there's a number of other things, but nothing that becomes an annual event that people look forward to because of things that have happened. We've lost the pro bowl. That's gone. So what is it we can do to get this community interacting and having fun and things like that? Yeah, bringing the communities all back together and having fun. And having fun. I could just see it. So what we have, we're thematic, and we're going to talk about sports. I want to talk about sports a little bit. And it's, two years ago, I stopped watching NFL football because of this not standing for the flag and the respect that I believe it deserves. You know, I'm an immigrant to this country and I stand for this flag. And I believe for everything that it's founded on. So I'll be real clear with saying that up front. But what's gotten to me is the hypocrisy of the NFL. Yes. I mean, that was really what started to get me. When I started gathering information on certain things that happened, the NFL has reacted negatively to it or the players union has not stepped in on it, but they'll step in on other things. So it's just hypocrisy. I got a couple that I want to bring up that kind of will tell you this. And some will remember this in Tim Tebow back in the early days. When Tim Tebow came out and he would kneel, he would kneel for each game to pray, right? I'm not a big religious guy. Your family on your hand are more religious than I am, more faith-based than I am. But I had no problem with him doing this. If that's what he wanted to do from his faith was concerned. He wasn't kneeling in disrespect for the flag. He wasn't kneeling to send a message. He was there because of his faith. He wanted to take a knee and have a prayer to his God. And ask for support. And guess what, the NFL said, you can't do that. So they said, you're not allowed to do this. Then he had the eye patch. Remember John 316, I think it was underneath. His eyes kind of written in there. They made him take that, too. Okay, wait a minute. A lot of players will just have the black in there. So he used that. And then put some John 316 in there. And just added that right in. And guess what, they made him take that off. Now, last year at a college football game I was watching, and I'm not going to name who it was, because I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I didn't get a chance to do the research. So during that game, and many people watched that game, and they talked about it afterwards, they had to replace the quarterback. And they brought in this young man. He was a freshman. And I noticed when he came in in the second quarter, I believe, he had a religious statement on the shading underneath his eyes. And I looked at that, and I said, you're not going to see this in the second half if this kid's playing in the second half. And sure enough, he came out in the second half, and it was gone. Totally gone. Back to the shading. There was no shading. It was like everything was gone. So my guess, and I have no way of proving this, is my guess, TV was watching it. The word got back down into the locker room. You've got to take this off. Yeah, and that happened. So that was a college one, not necessarily NFL. But in 2013, there was another one that happened. And a lot of this stuff hasn't done a lot of press. But Brandon Marshall was fine for wearing green cleats. He was fine for wearing it because he wanted to raise awareness of people with mental health disorders. He wanted to bring that. And that was his statement, his way of doing it with not disrespecting the flag or any of those kinds of things. No, they find it. The NFL find him for this. So again, I'm sitting here going, that's why I don't watch the NFL anymore. They don't get my money so much. They already care. I've been to two live NFL games in my entire life. And that'll be it. That'll never go again. Then a guy that you wouldn't think of, I think of 2014, Robert Griffin III, our G3. Yeah, our G3, yeah. He entered a post game conference. So at a conference, you know what the post game was? He had a t-shirt on that says, no Jesus and no peace. They made him turn it inside out. And he couldn't wear, they made him turn it inside out. So it wasn't an issue that he couldn't wear a t-shirt because I think in basketball, there are, what, dress coats. Dress coats, yes. For that. This wasn't a violation of the dress coat, of a dress coat. It was in violation of his speech. Yeah. To me, this is freedom of speech. Is it not? Right. And he's good at that. Or freedom of religion. Freedom of religion. And he's going to talk about the game and what went on. And he happened to have that on his shirt. But the NFL uniform police, as I call them, they made him turn it inside out when he came up and talked. Now, I'm thinking now, in retrospect, you can always think of these. They would have been good if he just said, well, guess what? If I can't go up there with this shirt on, then I'm just going to not go up. I can't go up. And I'll just tell them why I'm not going up because I have a shirt that says something along these lines. So, and I can, you know, there's lots of people, well, what if someone has something with hate speech on it? Well, that hate speech is hate speech. And that's not something that anyone should condone. Yes. Right? So let's don't play around with those kinds of things. So then in 2015, Daniel Williams, Daniel Williams, he was fine for wearing, find a cure eye black for breast cancer awareness. He was fine. For breast cancer awareness. Find a cure awareness. And he was fine. Yeah. Now, how many? But, you know, there's what? One weekend a year that the NFL team wants you to wear pink gloves, pink shoes, you know, pink, whatever, you know, on that. So, if it's NFL sanctioned, then you almost have to wear it. But if it's not NFL sanctioned. Well, what if I wanted to go somewhere? Yeah. No, I'm going to protest. I'm not going to wear pink. As a form of protest. Right. Duh. Again, it's trying to figure out this thing. Again, in 2015, William Gay was fine for wearing purple cleats to raise awareness of domestic violence. Now, not like the NFL has domestic violence problems. Oh, jeez. Oh, no. We don't want to go there. Not them. Don't go down that path. But, you know, the thing is, again, they find him for wearing those purple cleats to bring an attention to domestic violence. That needs to be something that we address, make conscious efforts of people understanding this. It's obviously been a problem within the NFL for a number of years. And now it's showing up in the universities. You see the things, all the histories and things that are coming back beyond domestic violence that's happening and those kinds of things. So it's really getting pretty amazing. 2016, NFL prevented Dallas Cowboys from wearing a decal. So in the NFL, we prevented the entire Dallas Cowboy team from wearing a decal on their helmet in honor of the five Dallas police officers killed in the line of duty. So, Dallas wanted to recognize these first responders to wear a decal or decal, depending on where you're from. For those officers, NFL said, no, you cannot do that. Not approved to do this. Which is going to keep bringing me back to this thing. You stand, kneel, or whatever for the flag. I mean, it all keeps coming back. Then, in 2016, the NFL threatened the fine players who wanted to wear cleats to commemorate the 15th anniversary of 9-11. So the NFL threatened the fine players if they wore cleats to commemorate 9-11. And then there's another one. So they've been very consistent up to a point. Up to a point. So now here we are. And so the beginning of this year, not the beginning, but before the season started, NFL said that they were going to pass a rule that everybody had to stand. This was what you do in respect to the flag. The owners said, yes, this is what we're going to have happen. And then the union got involved and said that they did not have an opportunity to voice their opinion on it because it was a union issue or a labor issue. And so now here we are back again. It's just a mess. Some are standing. Some are putting their fists up. Some are remaining in their locker. Some are kneeling. I mean, it's just, and so this asked me why I don't pay attention to it. Because if you want to send a message and you're making millions of dollars per year as an employee, then take some of your money and fund other efforts. You can still respect this flag. And you could provide that money to an organization that supports what you're trying to support. What your cause is. You mentioned LeBron James. Yes, yes. So what was that? What did he just recently do? Yeah, he just built a large school for inner city kids at risk. And he did that in Akron, Ohio. And what a great thing to do. What a great way to really, well, to give back to the community and to have a, you know, a thing that you personally were involved with. Right. And it's not just, you know, I got to give it to LeBron James. It's not just, you know, easy for him to talk about it. It was big money. It was millions of dollars. And he didn't really afford it. Yeah. But some could not, don't have to spend it, but he did. Right. And he went all in for it. It wasn't just, oh, this looks good. No, this doesn't look good. This is, I put my money into it. Yeah. And I can put his money where his mouth is. Exactly. So that's my commentary for the first half of this show. You know, this hypocrisy, you know, I'm up to here with it. I feel like I got my life back, though, not having to worry about football anymore. There you go. It's so good. I still concentrate on college. I still like college football games and so on. Yeah. But not having to deal with, I don't care. Yeah. And I have a number of friends that don't care anymore. Anyway, we got to take a break. We just burned through the first half of the show. Then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about our intercollegiate. Intercollegiate. Yeah, intercollegiate. Yeah, intercollegiate. Baseball preseason weekend we're having an idea on. So Rick's the fundmeister. Gordo the tech star. We'll be back in about a minute after we pay some bills. This is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. Do you want to be cool? If so, watch my show on Tuesdays at one called out of the comfort zone. I sang this song to you because I think you either are cool or have the potential to be seriously cool. And I want you to come watch my show where I bring in experts who talk all about easy strategies to be healthier, happier, build better relationships and make your life a success. So come sit with the cool kids at out of the comfort zone on Tuesdays at one. See you. Aloha. How you doing? Gordo the tech star here. Welcome to Hibachi Talk. I've got Rick's the fundmeister here joining us. Good to be back. Nice to have you back from our travels. Again, as we mentioned earlier, if you want to call us at 808-374-2014, you can do that. You can email us at the ThinkTech website. You can go to the Hibachi Talk. Yeah. Outlook.com and send us an email there if you want. You can actually listen to ThinkTech shows, listen to, not have to watch them. So they don't have to see our pretty faces. They don't have to see me. Yeah, so our pretty faces are no longer there. You can go to the Apple and download and do it in the car when you're driving home. There you go. So there's all kinds of options as this entity continues to grow and evolve. Anyway, so let's talk about this. It's kind of fun, right? So the concept here is we find four university teams in Hawaii which we kind of identify through the RUH, UH Hilo, BYU, and HPU. We put together a round robin two-day, possibly three-day, a long weekend baseball event to raise money for the schools and to get families together. And this town loves rivalries. Yes, they do. Right? The rivalries that we could have. And then the things we could do to tweak the game so that the NCAA doesn't get its rules all concerned and so on because it just becomes a fun event. And it should be fun for the university. It should be fun for the students, the players, the families, and the fans. Yeah. And it could be. Listen in on this one. There are just some crazy ideas. There's crazy ideas. You're going to scratch your head. You're going to think, oh, man, what are these? And some of them, they're just going to be laughers. You're going to have just a great, fun time thinking. Yeah. Yeah. So things that we're thinking about doing that could happen here. So again, instead of nine-ending games, they could be a seven-ending game. Yeah. Right? Keep them a little bit shorter. Yeah. A coach or manager has to be playing. And maybe on a different team. Maybe on a different team. Yeah. I mean, we could shuffle them around and do this kind of thing. We get the ladies involved. So we can get the ladies, the softball teams. Because you got, UH has a good softball team. And get the ladies involved so that they are part of what's going on in this and how they get interjected into the games themselves. Old timers. Yeah. That'd be great. Old timers. Bring some of the old timers back. Yeah. And get them playing in some of the innings and so on. And maybe you could even bring in some of the sports casters. Oh, yeah. Or the sports riders. Yes. And here's your inning. You're going to be a pinch hitter for this. Oh. You just gave me another idea. So didn't you used to umpire? I did. And didn't you umpire with Jim Leahy? Jim Leahy? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. You banned Pal Eldridge. Wow. Jim Pal and I. Yeah. Excuse me. Guest umpire. That'd be great. Oh, did you hear the heckling for the umpire? Oh, I know. Yeah. And maybe you have to put the umpire out, you know, on first base. Yeah. You know, something like that. Something like that. Oh, it could just be. I mean, again, you could turn this into just a continually. You can have four outfielders. Yeah. You know, and one of the outfielders is going to be someone who's not, you know, not normally a player. Not normally a player. Um, the other things that he could have is, oh, you could throw politicians in there. No, no. No, man. Bad idea. Let's take that one out. Yeah. Bad idea. Oh, the losing politician. Oh, that's a bit of a worse idea. Bad, bad. It'd be a lot. Oh, God, yeah. There would be a whole team of losing politicians. There wouldn't be many Republicans. There's not many that run. It wouldn't happen. Yeah. Now, if you do it in the general, then all the Republicans would be out there. Yeah. That's where it would have to be. That's the only way they could get a team, field a team. Well, we could have the Republicans and the Democrats as the umpires. They could question a call. Oh, that would be awesome. But again, you could see the kinds of fun that we could have. Yeah. And if the call got questioned, maybe we could have a Supreme Court judge come in to determine whether or not we could have a Supreme Court judge. Are the attorney generals? Yeah. Oh, because now we're getting stupid. Yeah. Well, it's not like we don't get anywhere that's just happening. But see, the whole point of this weekend, I got to come back to it again, is we don't have the pro bowl anymore. We have the high school football, which brings all kinds of families together. My wife and I went to the Wahine softball championships. There you go. High school championships. Wow. Wahiwa versus Punahou last year, and oh my goodness, what a wonderful day we had. It was an evening game. And just the camaraderie and the rivalry and everything that went on there was just, and this is one of the things that was kind of tweaking my head on this idea to see how the families were having fun with each other and all kinds of good stuff. Yeah. So, but you know, taking that course, the other things we could think of, I thought of it as like, you know, we could also have, if you do it, if we could get less more commie, each of the teams could have their own food booth. Yeah. Because they had the schools involved in the food booth. Yeah. We imagine if the teams had their own food booths and they could, you know. That'd be great. They could have a chili cook-off. Yeah. Chili and hot dogs. Hey, baseball and hot dog, just a hot dog. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That'd be great. Anything that would go... Cracker Jacks. Cracker Jacks. Do they even make Cracker Jacks anymore? They still do make Cracker Jacks anymore. I don't know. I think they do. I think they do. I hope they do. But, you know, and the sponsors that could be brought on board to help fund the event itself, be able to fund the players, you know, like UH Hilo being able to get over here, maybe discounted or somehow show us your baseball ticket and you get a discounted airfare. Discounted as you go back. Or you get something. You know, all the kinds of things that would help promote the businesses in town. So now you're promoting local businesses. Again, you've got the families. You've got the rivalries. You've got the humor factor going in there. Hey, we could get Jay up. There you go. Jay. I could see Jay as a catcher. We could get a ball by him. I know. I just insulted the boss. Oh, well. I'm sure it's not the first time. We could get down to once a month after this. No, once every other month. Yeah. Or not at all. Or we have to pay. So, but just again. Yeah. But I mean, even you could have like the school choirs come out at the seventh inning stretch, you know, and they could sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Yeah. You know, you could have a competition on that. You would come up with the best, you know. Oh, the things like that. The best thing, you know, the bands could get involved. I mean, there could be all kinds of the rallies and so on. I think, and I'm doing this based on experience. I meet a lot of tourists at the University of Hawaii baseball games. Many from Australia. Okay. Who purposely come when they come to Hawaii during the baseball season, they go to watch University of Hawaii baseball. They love the ambiance and everything there. And they really enjoy the game. And last year, last year, two separate occasions, I met two couples from Australia who were there for the weekend. And they said, oh, yeah, there's a number of us that come just for the games. So I think it would bring in the tourists to get in there. Yeah. We could get, we could get a movie ahead of the Hawaii Tourism and Lodging Association. Yeah. You know. You'd love to. Get in. He loves sports. Yeah. Hawaii venture capital, Hawaii. Anyway, all the different tourism organizations that we have. We could even get Angus out there. We could have a puppet. Get him to throw out the first pitch. That would go about an inch and a half. He could throw it to Jay behind the play. Behind the play. Perfect. Jay, there's no way Jay would get hurt. That's for sure. So let me tell you what's kind of happening. So Sam Moku, who is the acting director of HPU, who was supposed to be on the show today and had an emergency come up and he had to not be able to make it. So we're going to get him back. But he's actually kind of, I think, leading the charge and he's trying to get meetings with all the different athletic directors and so on. So I'll be meeting with him again and we'll get him on the show and maybe we can get some legs with this. Yeah. That'd be great. You know, fans here in Hawaii, you know, call in or, you know, email in. He bought you talk at Outlook.com. Send that. I'll start playing this together. Let us know. Even, you know what? Write to the paper. You know, letter to the editor. Yeah. Well, then you and I should do that. Yeah. Actually, you got time. If you ghost write it, I'll sign it. Okay, there you go. Maybe. I'll read it first. All right. So anyway, we've burned through the show, believe it or not. It's already done. You and I always have a bunch of chuckles together. Thanks again. Hey, it's always great to be here with you. We haven't seen you for a while, so safe travels. Yeah. We'll be back at the end of the month. So we have to get redirected on how to find this place. I was lost. It didn't work that. Anyway, Gordo the Texar. You're always lost. I'm always lost. That's true. Gordo the Texar here with Ibaachi talk. And with my good old buddy, Rick's the Funmeister. It's always a pleasure, buddy. Thanks, Gordo. Always a fun, fun time. Son. Okay, Dad. Okay. And like we say at the end of every show, one, two, three. You remember? How are you doing?