If there was a red-faced embarrassment the University of Hawai'i didn't need to relive, a painful chapter the Warrior football team should have wanted to draw considerable distance from, it was the 49-21 loss to Notre Dame in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl seven months ago.

The worst loss in his 40-year career, head coach Greg McMackin had called it.

Why McMackin chose to not only resurrect but compound it yesterday tossing around a term offensive to gays we'll never know and he will undoubtedly long regret. But in using — and repeating — "f-----" yesterday at the Western Athletic Conference Football Media Preview, McMackin went beyond a forgettable football game to something more regrettable, intolerance, in the worst of forums.

Before a room full of reporters and tape recorders in Salt Lake City he attempted to make light of his own failing and ended up, by reflection, disparaging the school that employs him instead. This before what became, in the age of the internet, a national audience.

Then, stumbling through an apology, he proceeded to dig the hole deeper telling reporters to "just, please ... cover for me" or he would "deny it."

Eventually, McMackin returned and made a full and heartfelt apology.

It was a turn of events so bizarre as to be unmatched in decades of such WAC events, which have a reputation for somnolence rather than sizzle.

And, indeed, there was an unreal — can he really be saying all this? — quality to McMackin's speech; an almost Al Campanis-like painfulness to the whole thing. All in large part because it was so uncharacteristic of McMackin's public persona.

The McMackin most have come to know in his three-plus years at UH is more Grandpa Happy, the guy with the perpetually outstretched hand welcoming one and all. You might no more expect yesterday's disturbing diatribe from that McMackin than a department store greeter.

Notre Dame officials were too polite to say publicly what they undoubtedly were thinking or expressing privately. Or, maybe, they were just as perplexed at the unfathomable spectacle as we were and too classy to pile on.

Out-classed on the field by the most storied of football programs is one thing. Embarrassing yourself in front of it — and the nation — with regrettable off-the-field conduct is worse.