Friday, January 04, 2008

Haka: the dance of a loser

So it seems that not only did the yell leader anger some Penn State fans but there was more to the "festivities" before the Alamo bowl last week. At the coaches' dinner last Wednesday, Texas A&M interim coach Gary Darnell kidded Penn State's Joe Paterno by saying, ''We're going to kick your ass,'' something that didn't sit well with PSU players.

''It's like, the gall of this guy,'' senior receiver Terrell Golden said. ''There's nothing wrong with having confidence in your team, but to blatantly disrespect a legend? You just don't do that.''

Thursday we had the infamous yellgate but in addition to all that, A&M's "talent" portion of the banquet had Penn State players a tad on the angry side. After several Lions sang, led by lineman Gerald Cadogan, the Aggies did a Haka the traditional Maori dance made popular in the College football world by Hawaii. Now I'm no dancing expert but the Haka appears to be a hard dance to learn, one that probably takes a lot of time to perfect. So we have two teams in Hawaii and Texas A&M who used said difficult dance as a means of motivation and intimidation and both teams lost (in Hawaii's case they were a gnat on the truck windshield that was Georgia). Deon Butler said it best:

It was ''cute'' but ''maybe they should have spent more time practicing football instead of practicing their dance.''

Next time how about trying a dance you could learn in about 10 minutes like the Soulja Boy – anybody can learn that. Here I'll even give you help.




1...2...3...go.. yua!

5 comments:

drozz said...

i understand when the hawaiins(sp?) haka before their games; it is a long-standing polynesian tradition to do so before war. Hawaiin culture is akin to this.

many polynesian teams perform this traditional dance before competition, the most notable (and responsible for the growing popularity of said tradition)being the most bad-ass rugby team on the planet, the new zealand all-blacks (maori influence). peep this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC_aB7vzmEw

the french should have never taken the pitch that day.

but i digress. A&M might have tried their own haka, but the impact would not have been felt by a team that 1)had no clue what the hell the aggies were doing and 2)most likely would have seen it as a taunt. further, i am pretty sure that A&M has a very scarce polynesian influence.

each haka has its own meaning; am wondering about who the Aggies ripped off. The haka is supposed to have personal meaning for the team performing it. to use the all black example (ka mate, cannibalism involved):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqscWPRGPJ4

"We're going into battle and not expecting to come back alive"-this is the general purpose of a war haka. The individual message that the all-blacks portray is life affirming.
pretty strong stuff, there.

wow. really went off on a tangent. sorry, played rugby for about a decade and i hate when teams pervert tradition for their own uses.

Galen said...

Wow drozz you get the TNL award for the longest comment. As a matter of full disclosure I did an extensive look at Wikipedia about the Haka before posting this just so I knew what it was - I usually do that before insulting an entire race of people. I read all about the all-blacks and the different haka versions, it was actually interesting reading. But then, like always, I belittle and poke fun, because that's the kind of ass I am.

drozz said...

oops-in no way was that meant to be construed as the blogger being ignorant-far from it. i was merely trying to state that the Aggies had no business trying something that they were clueless about in the first place. then the coffee kicked in and i went a-rantin'.

Nick said...

It's ok drozz, we bloggers don't shower and shave, so we're all ignorant dumbasses and we're comfortable with that fact

drozz said...

it takes a very big person to admit their shortcomings. i'll tell stewart mandel that you finally 'fessed up. then y'all can hug it out.