The sun rose, as usual, over New Orleans yesterday.

A bruised and battered University of Hawai'i football team, soundly thrashed by Georgia the night before, limped aboard a chartered jet and headed home, the stinging taunts of "Overrated!" ringing in their ears.

It was a quiet end to an extraordinary season that rallied the entire state, packed Aloha Stadium with thundering crowds and made demigods of quarterback Colt Brennan and his teammates.

But it's over now. What's left is the Wednesday-morning quarterbacking: Were the Warriors deserving of a Bowl Championship Series berth? Did their 12-0 regular-season record disguise a weak schedule and a weak program that's no match for the big Mainland football conferences? Should head coach June Jones get a fat new contract to keep his brand of football at UH?

All fair questions. How they are answered may help determine how much UH and Warrior boosters will invest in the program to make it more competitive on a national level.

But in the meantime, there's another question to be asked: How do you measure success?

The Warriors set out to win every single regular-season game. They succeeded.

They set out to qualify for a major post-season bowl game. They succeeded.

They set out to win the hearts and minds of dedicated and fair-weather fans alike. They succeeded beyond measure.

And if college football is primarily entertainment, Brennan's spectacular aerial bombardments and never-say-die, come-from-behind victories made the 2007 Warrior season an unprecedented success.

All this may be hard to appreciate through the disappointing haze of their 41-10 beating in the Sugar Bowl, a loss that, while lopsided, is hardly unprecedented. Oklahoma lost the 2005 Orange Bowl by 37 points. Illinois lost this year's Rose Bowl by 32.

But that's in the past. After all, it's a new year. The sun will rise again on a new season, which, it's hoped, will be informed by the lessons of this last, amazing one.

And that's reason enough to believe.

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