UH shouldn’t just give up its 13th football game

New University of Hawaii athletic director Ben Jay has probably never heard of the late Henry “Hank” Vasconcellos, who preceded him in office by more than a half century, but Jay is the latest caretaker of his considerable legacy.

Vasconcellos, who did double duty as UH’s athletic director and head football coach (1952-60), is perhaps best known for the 1955 upset of Nebraska in Lincoln. But his enduring gift to the school is the so-called “Hawaii Exemption.”

That’s the NCAA policy whereby teams — not just football, but basketball, etc. — that come to play UH here are permitted an extra game, a benefit eventually also extended to Hawaii teams. In football it now means the option of playing a 13th game to help defray expenses.

Over the years that has made it more attractive for the Western Athletic Conference, Mountain West and Big West to add UH as a member. It has helped make it possible for USC, Notre Dame, Michigan and Texas, among others, to play here in football and North Carolina and Kansas to come in basketball. USC, for example, will use it for the 2013 opener.

That history, plus the remarkable fact that somebody from UH was actually able to get the NCAA membership to respond to the plight of Hawaii well before statehood, makes the “Hawaii Exemption” the closest thing to an heirloom the athletic department has.

Which is why UH should think long and hard about making a regular practice of foregoing the so-called “extra” game in football.

With the cancellation of the 2013 and ’14 games against Brigham Young, UH is staring at the possibility of 12-game schedules for both seasons. Throw in 2012 and that’s three in a row. This after UH had declined the exemption just once in the previous 15 years.

To be sure, leaving a late-season puka for the MWC title game complicates things. And, if you are UH, you don’t want to run annual gauntlets of 13 consecutive games without an open date.

This is where, in the spirit of Vasconcellos and necessity of the times, some innovation is called for. At some point, if you let the “Hawaii Exemption” go unused too long somebody is going to question allowing it to continue. It has been under attack and targeted for repeal in the past even when UH hasn’t let it lapse.

Jay’s immediate predecessor, Jim Donovan, had begun lobbying for an addendum to the exemption, one that sought to allow UH to open the season a week earlier so it wouldn’t have to shoehorn 13 games into the regular 13- to 14-week schedule.

The original “Hawaii Exemption” was a triumph of crisis management and forward thinking. When San Jose State pulled out of a contracted 1954 game after tickets had already been printed, citing financial problems, Vasconcellos quickly proposed legislation granting the extra game, No. 11 at that time. Then he tirelessly lobbied for the measure, pushing it through at the 1955 NCAA Convention in New York, 86-67.

A succession of UH ADs has maintained and expanded it to fit their times. Now, it passes to Jay to take up that stewardship.

———

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.