Too bad the University of Hawaii can’t trade a few lawyers and PR people for some healthy defensive tackles.

Someone tweeted that these state Senate hearings are just a big waste of time. I do ponder sometimes if that is true. Especially when Sen. Donna Kim reminds us all that the exercise is “informational” in nature.

It seems no one at UH is going to be seriously punished for wasting our resources, making the university look buffoonish and continually pointing fingers in other directions when asked for accountability in the Stevie Wonder situation.

Maybe my friend Phil Roberts, the superb producer for Bobby Curran’s radio show, will accept all blame. He’s already agreed to take responsibility for the football team’s failings.

The running tab is more than $1 million now in the fallout over the bumbling loss of one fifth of that amount. And still, outside lawyers and UH administrators want to quibble and play the blame game about disregard for not just their own internal procedures, but the law, too.

Take former athletic director Jim Donovan’s new position — a marketing job that chancellor Tom Apple seems to think is as essential as cops on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Maybe it is incredible that we’ve all somehow survived without it. The problem is you can’t just give someone a $200,000-a-year state job that might be considered part of a legal settlement without the Board of Regents’ approval.

The BOR got angry about it, but then just let it slide right through after an eight-hour private meeting (now, THAT was a waste of time).

Speaking of privacy, that was a big issue Tuesday. All this redaction action has me thinking I should invest in a magic marker and make some big bucks.

Former president Evan Dobelle’s name was even blacked out in a passage where it was stated he’d waived his privacy; that would be really funny except that someone got paid to do it. And every time Dobelle’s name comes up we are reminded of the many golden parachutes and soft landings we’ve all funded at UH.

Arena manager Rich Sheriff — UH’s point person with promoter Bob Peyton on the failed concert — escaped the debacle with his job. Tuesday he escaped with soft toss from the senators who didn’t follow up when he repeatedly handed off responsibility to his “superiors.”

Sheriff said he didn’t notice any red flags along the way and trusted Peyton, whom he “thought was working with legitimate people he’d worked with before.”

The way the fact-finders’ (expensive) report and Sheriff tell it, this was the ultimate team error. If you were to fire one person at UH over it you’d have to fire them all. As much as some would like to see it, that ain’t gonna happen.

But how about shedding as much of this outside counsel and public relations consulting as possible?

Sen. Jill Tokuda asks why they don’t seek help from the attorney general’s office first. Good question.

And maybe, as regent James Lee suggests is possible, lower campus’ problems are a “microcosm” of systemwide dysfunction and can be used as a model to fix the whole thing.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. But if it turns out that way, the high profile of UH sports will have served a useful purpose even in very dark days.

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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783.