COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’87 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : NOGA KNOCKOUT : When It Comes to Relentless, Hard-Hitting Line Play, Hawaii Fans Are Making a Fuss Over This Rainbow

Even amid the tourist crush on Waikiki’s Kuhio Avenue, Al Noga knows people everywhere. A girl beeps her horn wildly, and Noga, the defensive tackle for the University of Hawaii who last year became the school’s first All-American, gives her a tap of the horn and a wave. “My friend,” he says.

A woman on the sidewalk looks like his sister, and Noga, in the middle of traffic, quickly slips his new white Monte Carlo SS with spoiler and tinted windows into reverse--but it’s someone else.

Over at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel, Noga knows the flame-dancer, Falaniko Vitale, whose sister is married to Noga’s brother Niko, a starting linebacker for the St. Louis Cardinals.

He also knows the parking lot attendant, a bartender, several waiters, a grass-skirted performer, the ticket-sellers and the light man for the hotel’s dinner show, the Polynesian Review.

Around and about, he sees an old school friend, a nephew, someone else who has married into the family and a young man he calls the richest Samoan on Oahu.

“These are my people,” he says after stopping to speak at length with another group in Samoan. “When you’re Samoan, you can’t just run into another Samoan and not say hello.”

These people know Noga, and they, like others on the islands, know Rainbow football.

But back on the mainland, a place Noga says is “nice for a vacation, but not to live,” neither his name nor the speed and single-mindedness with which he breaks through the line or swings around the end on his way to a sack are so well known, particularly not beyond Hawaii’s Western Athletic Conference opponents. Despite making first-team All-American as a junior, his name is missing from some preseason lists.

Last year, Noga, who was listed at 6 feet 1 inch and 236 pounds, had 17 sacks. That feat earned him a nickname, the Samoan Sack Man, and caused more than one opposing coach to call him the best defensive lineman he had seen.

This year, he has grown to 6-2, 260, and his affection for the nickname is apparent. The license plate of the new car, bought, he said, with money given him by his brother Niko, reads “SAC-MAN.”

Noga only regrets that the six-letter limit prohibited working Samoan in there as well. “Or I would have liked Sac-Man Kid,” he said.

Of his 90 tackles last year, 31 were for losses. Twice--against Texas El Paso and Fresno State--he had three sacks in a game. Against Fresno State, he put two quarterbacks out of the game.

Despite such statistics, his fame has not spread as rapidly as might be expected. He was voted WAC defensive player of the year, which was nice. One of the people he outpolled was Brigham Young’s Jason Buck, who won the Outland Trophy.

Even with two brothers in the pros--Niko and Pete, a rookie with the Cardinals--and his All-American designation, Noga probably is less well known because he plays for Hawaii.

By the time the Rainbows, who open the season Saturday against Cal State Fullerton, finish playing a night game in Aloha Stadium, the papers already have hit the streets in New York, which is five time zones away--six when the mainland is on daylight-saving time. Scores often don’t even make the West Coast papers, three time zones away in the early part of the season.

“It’s not like Hawaii is a hundred miles off California,” Noga said. “It’s thousands.”

In Honolulu, though, recognition comes easy.

At the Polynesian Review, while Noga ate from three plates piled high with rice, chicken and beef from the Hawaiian buffet, a young woman whose job is to photograph the tourists came by. She looked at Noga, handed the camera to her assistant, and had her own picture taken with Noga. An hour later, she returned and sold him a copy of the picture for $12.

“They know me in Waikiki,” Noga said. “The ones that don’t, the others tell them.”

The tourists, the non-Hawaiians, less often know of his exploits. But they know enough to take notice of a brawny young man wearing a thick gold chain and with a fearsome appearance enhanced by the beginnings of a goatee.

Already, he has the look of a pro.

“The tourists, they’re nice people,” Noga said as a few stared.

Honolulu is home, but Noga knows that he, like his brothers, will have to leave if he is to play pro football.

“Why didn’t the USFL put a team over here?” Noga wonders, even though the league is inactive. “We could have just about had the defense from just me and my brothers.”

Although he will keep his permanent home in Hawaii, he will move to the mainland next year--ideally, he said, to join his brothers in St. Louis, or to go to New York.

“We (Samoans) are not like you folks who become 18 and are free to go,” Noga said. “As a Samoan, you should stay. But now me and my brothers have to go to play football somewhere else.”

Al--his full name is Alapati--takes great pride in Samoan ohana-- brotherhood--and sometimes can be seen on campus wearing a lava-lava, a traditional Samoan cloth worn wrapped about the waist.

He is the sixth of 10 children of Iosefa and Noela Noga, who brought their family to Honolulu from American Samoa when Al was a preschooler. They settled, as many Samoan families do at first, in a low-income housing development, this one on Kam IV Road, in an area of Honolulu once known for violence and drug-trafficking. The area has improved some in the last 10 years.

The children are John, Julia, Tino, Falaniko (Niko), Petelo (Pete), Alapati, George--an adopted son--Ropeti, Michael and Leilani. Niko has shown the way, Noga said, and by the time Al signs a pro contract, if not before, the family probably will move out of the old neighborhood.

But Noga maintains that his brothers have helped make him perhaps the best player of the three--what Hawaii Coach Bob Wagner calls the best “collider” of them all as a college player.

“There’s people stronger than us,” Noga said. “There’s people stronger than I am on my team, but they don’t have the God-given talent we do. Me and my brothers, we play a different way.”

It is a way of playing easily understood when seen, much harder to describe.

For Al, it is enhanced by an appearance of ferociousness accentuated by a jersey worn knotted tightly across his midriff and with the sleeves tucked under, the better to expose the bulge of his biceps.

But his speed is the key to Noga’s Sack Man successes. There are times when he will out-muscle an offensive lineman, but there are many more when he darts between two, or most often, simply outraces a lineman around the end and rushes in for the sack.

It has not been so rare an occasion that Noga, the left tackle, has come in from behind to drop a running back for a loss--on a play going the opposite direction.

Cal State Fullerton’s Coach Gene Murphy, whose team was held to 10 yards rushing in a 26-15 loss to Hawaii last year, calls Noga the most dominant defensive player he’s seen, and remembers that Noga “made a fool” out of John Elliott, a highly respected Michigan offensive lineman, last year.

More than one of Noga’s coaches over the years has sought to change him from a lineman to a linebacker, as both Niko and Pete are. But they have met with little success.

As a sophomore, playing under Coach Dick Tomey, now at Arizona, Noga played linebacker for three games.

“They moved me to linebacker one year,” Noga said. “I don’t like linebacker. I’m not made to be a linebacker. I said, ‘You want me to play linebacker, you’re wrong.’ I like where the action is. I don’t want to wait for the action. I like it right away.”

Sometimes, people tell him he will have to play linebacker in the pros because of his size.

“I say, ‘I don’t know who you’re talking to,’ ” Noga said. “You want me to play linebacker, you’re going to miss out on a great lineman.”

He credits his success as a lineman to a plain bit of advice given him by Larry McDuff, formerly coach of the Hawaii defensive line and now with Tomey at Arizona.

“He told me to master the left tackle,” Noga said. “He said, ‘Can you master the left tackle?’ I said, ‘Sure, I can do that. I’ll master the left tackle.’ Before I knew it, I did more than master the left tackle. I mastered All-American.”

Despite the apparent confidence, Noga isn’t certain that he can make All-American again, or win the awards he covets--the Lombardi and the Outland.

Last year, he was the leader of a unit that ranked sixth in total defense in the nation. But only one other starter--safety Pat McCray--is back this year, so Noga figures to be double-teamed a lot.

One highlight is that Nick Maafala, a defensive lineman who at 6-2, 250 is said to be nearly as impressive as Noga, is back after sitting out a year.

Still, while Hawaii, which finished 7-5 last year, scrambles to implement a complex new run-and-shoot offense before the Fullerton game, Rich Ellerson, the defensive coordinator, sticks by a one-word description for the old defense--Noga.

Noga, who says that as he homes in on a quarterback he thinks only of what a sack will do for his stats, wants nothing so much as to win the Lombardi or the Outland, largely for what it would add to the football lore of the Noga clan.

“Everything would just be set if I have a chance to win the Lombardi or the Outland,” he said. “My life would just be set if I win one of those. As long as I win one of those for my family, to say that a Noga did that.”

With two brothers already in the pros, Al apparently on his way, and three younger football playing brothers, the Noga family’s reputation seems assured.

“How many families can say that? How many?” Noga said, asking a question whose answer he figures he already knows.