Of words, heritage and execution

Interesting word play when doing the piece on Norm Chow and Robert Anae.

In today’s newspaper is a story/column on Chow and Anae and how they grew up an hour apart on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. My first choice of words to describe the duo was to call them the Polynesian Play callers.

We have an editor on staff who grew up in Hawaii and this person believes the use of “Polynesian” to describe these two was inaccurate. Chow is of Chinese decent while Anae’s is part Samoan and Caucasian. Like many youth who grow up in Hawaii, the blood is mixed and it is a big melting pot of difference races from the Philippines, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii, China, Japan and other nationalities.

Well, anyway, there was some discussion about this and it was decided to call them guys from Hawaii, even though they are not specifically of Hawaiian blood, a race of people whose pure blood is extremely rare.

After football practice, I ased Anae to weigh in on his opinion on this debate to Anae and asked what he thought and I was impressed by his explanation.

Anae, who has a doctorate in sociology, looked at this as an issue right down his alley.

He said I was correct to describe both he and Chow as Polynesians, a term used to describe island people from Hawaii to the South Pacific – regardless of bloodline. I asked him why.

“What you are describing is an issue of ethnicity and culture, not race. If you’re thinking of it as race, it’s like putting it in a box like Hitler wanted to do with the Arian race, or pure blood. We are island people, we are Hawaiians and we are Polynesian, those terms describe our culture and people.”

Ok, coach.

Anae said he’s expecting a lot of the same ploys from DeWayne Walker’s UCLA defense this week. He said BYU will face the same kind of pressure witnessed in the Las Vegas Bowl. BYU will have to counter, but better execution, he said. While BYU has tweaked some aspects of their offense to deal with pressure, Anae said the main focus by the Cougars is still doing what they do with greater precision and timing and that will make the difference in dealing with the Bruin defense and personnel. He has great respect for Walker and the Bruin talent he’ll face as a play caller.

The official BYU-UCLA line is down to 8 points after opening at 10 points for BYU.