Decision to retire jerseys, not numbers, makes sense

The present for University of Hawaii athletics is shaky and the future is uncertain at best.

But UH can still celebrate its past.

Athletic director Ben Jay and his staff have developed criteria to determine if student-athletes and coaches are worthy of having their jerseys retired (I’m not sure how a coach from a team other than baseball has a jersey retired … maybe a sports coat or aloha shirt can be hung from the rafters of the Stan Sheriff Center).

This type of honor has always been a problem for UH, and not for a very good reason. The silly argument against it has been that you can’t afford to run out of numbers, because you still have to assign them to future players.

I always thought that ridiculous because I recall learning in elementary school about 45 years ago that numbers go to infinity. And there is no sport where you would run out of double digits except for football, and that ship sailed long ago with duplication of uniform numbers (whether we hate it or not).

When logic won’t take hold though, you find a workaround. In UH’s case, it will retire jerseys instead of numbers.

Jay said all numbers will remain available. So if, say, Jason Elam’s jersey were to be slated for immortality, his No. 7 could still be worn by current and future UH football players.

"Yes, for now. Of course policy could be changed later," Jay said. "At least we have one now."

The first official honoree will be Judy Mosley-McAfee, the Rainbow Wahine basketball great who died of cancer last year. Her jersey will be elevated to the rafters of the Sheriff Center in a celebration next season, Jay said.

Mosley-McAfee — without a doubt the greatest player in UH women’s basketball history — is a fine choice and her legacy extremely deserving.

Others will be less than slam dunks in all minds, and that’s why UH has set forth objective criteria for nomination, such as conference player of the year and All-America honors. There are also subjective qualifications like, "Nominee must have had a highly significant impact on his/her sports team," and "Nominee must hold top or near the top statistical records/ranking for his/her sport team."

Since a nominee must only meet two of the qualifications, UH gets a lot of wiggle room in deciding who is immortalized and who isn’t.

I’m OK with that, but if they get too loose with the criteria the Sheriff Center will look more like a Rainbowtique outlet than a playing arena.

Even before deciding on the fate of Heisman finalist Colt Brennan’s No. 15 jersey, UH should make sure it does the right thing by Tommy Kaulukukui and his No. 32.

You might remember the story of how his was the only UH football number retired, before it was inadvertently "unretired" and given to running back Richard Higa in the 1980s.

Just for fun, here are the names of the owners of UH football digits on the current roster: No. 7, running back Joey Iosefa; No. 14 (Timmy Chang’s number), wide receiver Marcus Kemp ; No. 15, wide receiver Adonis Phillips; No. 26 (Gary Allen), running back Jason Muraoka. At this time, the roster lists no one with No. 32 or No. 54 (Niko and Al Noga).

But, as we noted earlier, this honor won’t be a numbers game at UH, at least for now.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. Read his blog at staradvertiser.com/quickreads.

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CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said that no one on the current roster had the same number as Timmy Chang and Gary Allen’s name was misspelled.