The State of Hawaii’s viability on the local and national sports scenes will be severely tested on several fronts in 2013. New University of Hawaii athletic director Ben Jay and second-year head football coach Norm Chow will be charged to make the program a viable one on the ever-changing landscapes of the Mountain West and Big West conferences.
The football team needs to transform into a competitive entity in a hurry, while the athletic department as a whole has to shake off the ramifications of the failed Stevie Wonder concert to regain support from the local community.
That support also has to remain strong on a couple of national fronts to keep the 50th state from being passed over by the NFL and the Professional Golf Association.
This month’s Pro Bowl and the start of the 2013 PGA Tour season are moneymakers for state tourism. But both organizations are facing choppy waters locally. This year’s Pro Bowl could be the last one played — period. And it’s the final time for the foreseeable future that the PGA Tour will start in Hawaii, something that has happened since 1999.
Those three sports stories and how they play out are the ones to watch in 2013.
1. JAY AND CHOW MUST PLAY WELL TOGETHER
It’s no secret Chow campaigned for Rockne Freitas to knock off the word interim in front of Freitas’ athletic director title. He and Freitas were from an era when football ruled supreme in the college sports world, something that changed with the emergence of Title IX.
With that said, Chow and Jay must find common ground in the days and months ahead to forge a workable partnership. The football program faces some difficult challenges this year, both on and off the field.
It’s nice to have successful volleyball, baseball and basketball teams; they help the bottom line. But the football program floats all boats. And if the Warriors continue to struggle as they did this past season, all ships will come ashore.
Jay must learn how to navigate in these waters. Things out here don’t work the same way they do at Ohio State. The Buckeyes are an established department with a football team that makes more money than the entire UH athletic department budget.
He will face challenges not only from within, but the outside influences and political pressures of upper campus and the State Legislature. Nobody makes news on the UH campus like the athletic department. In many ways, it is the campus’ face. We learned that from the interest generated by the Stevie Wonder blunder.
Both men are capable. They wouldn’t be where they are today if they weren’t. But how well they work behind the scenes with each other is crucial in the coming years ahead. Hawaii remains geographically challenged. That will never change. And how that’s addressed in the boardrooms of the Mountain West and Big West conferences will be crucial to the survival of the UH athletic department long-term.
2. IS THIS THE LAST PRO BOWL?
Later this month, local football fans may be making their last pilgrimage to Aloha Stadium for the NFL’s All-Star game. League commissioner Roger Goodell has hinted on more than one occasion that if this game is played the same way as the one here in 2012, pulling the plug is an option.
You may recall the boo birds made their presence felt here as the players went through the motions of a glorified seven-on seven drill. After the Super Bowl, Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers had a few choice words about some of his NFC teammates’ commitment to the game itself.
To be frank, it was more embarrassing than usual. And that’s saying something: Does anybody remember Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman leaving in the fourth quarter to get home in time for a parade in Big D? It was even worse than that.
Which begs the question: Is the Pro Bowl a viable game? We sure like it here in Hawaii. It has a huge economic impact for local tourism. The game showcases what the islands have to offer to those poor souls living on the frozen tundra of the northern United States. Local fans get to hang out with the game’s very best. And the players get a well-deserved vacation in the 50th state.
This year, the rookies have to play even harder than usual and the established stars have to play more than one or two series. Nobody’s asking for a Super Bowl-like atmosphere. Heck, we’re not even asking for preseason intensity. But maybe if you changed to a winner-gets-all-the-money format, you’d get the players’ attention.
3. THE PGA TOUR WON’T START HERE
Unless there’s some kind of major shakeup down the cart path, Friday’s Hyundai Tournament of Champions will be the last time the PGA Tour starts its season on Maui. Nobody knows for sure what effect that will have in the long run, but it takes away some of the significance of the two tournaments here.
In the current format, the Tournament of Champions and the Sony Open in Hawaii start the PGA Tour campaign. There’s a special feel to being first and second. Players are excited about the start of the new year. Winners from last season get a nice trip to Maui and often many stay over to play the following week on Oahu.
Starting next year, these two stops will be the seventh and eighth on tour, and you can’t help but wonder what that will mean on several fronts.
First off, will this year’s winners feel compelled to play on Maui in 2014 as they are now? There will be six opportunities to collect FedEx Cup points before ever arriving in the island chain. If you want to get off to a fast start now, you play here. If you want to get off to a fast start in the new schedule format, you play in California, Las Vegas, Malaysia, China, Georgia and Mexico.
Competing on Maui and Oahu in 2014 holds no special significance. It’s just two more tour stops in the middle of the holiday season. So, it’s hard to say who will play and who will stay home.
Once again, the money these two tournaments generate for local tourism is important; not as much as the Pro Bowl because that event is on a major network, not the Golf Channel, but big bucks just the same. The views from the Plantation Course are spectacular.
But if players decide to take time off in December and January, these two events face the same geographic challenge as the University of Hawaii athletic department. Why not wait until the tour returns to the mainland in California before dusting off the sticks?
And as we’ve seen in the past, golf events come and go in Hawaii on the LPGA and Champions tours. We’d hate to see something similar happen to the main tour because it no longer starts here.
