The way things have been going you might have begun to wonder what the University of Hawaii will find first, the missing $200,000 from the Stevie Wonder debacle or a new athletic director.

Tongue-in-cheek speculation has been there might be a Wonder sighting in the Stan Sheriff Center before there is an AD signing there.

After all, it has been more than three months since Jim Donovan was removed as athletic director and it is anybody’s guess when his successor will be named or in place. Though, at last, there are signs of movement now that a search firm is reportedly being added at the search advisory committee’s request.

The previously announced "firm target date of Nov. 1" to recommend an AD candidate to Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple is 12 days away and, as of Friday, we’re told the committee had yet to review any of the more than 90 applications submitted.

According to UH’s initial advertisement of the position in August, the review of applications was to have begun on Sept. 21, and it was suggested that applicants get their information in by Sept. 28 "for best consideration." Those deadlines became obsolete soon after they were posted.

Even the amended date of "early November" for a selection is looking like a long shot. Privately, one UH official, who was not authorized to speak about the search, suggested it "could be December, or maybe even January, before we have a new AD on the job."

You hope that assessment is wrong, but then, this is one of those only-at-UH situations where nothing should surprise.

After all, if we took UH President M.R.C. Greenwood at her word in August that "the attention of campus leadership had already turned to the recruitment process" for a new athletic director when the Wonder fiasco broke back in July, a permanent AD might already have been named.

Instead, Rockne Freitas, UH vice president for student affairs and university/community relations, has been serving as acting AD since July 11 and commuting between his "morning" job in Bachman Hall and his "afternoon" job down in the quarry.

The whole Wonder Blunder was set in motion because the UH bureaucracy was all too willing to send out $200,000 — and by wire to boot — in haste and without due diligence.

Now we have the opposite: the procurement bureaucracy’s glacial approval of a search firm, which has held up the AD selection process. More time, perhaps, to solicit donations to fund the $60,000-$90,000 fee of the search firm.

Somewhere in between you imagine there has to be a prudent and realistic middle ground for these things. A patch of landscape that UH has, so far, apparently been unable to find.

The 11-member search advisory committee is scheduled to meet again next week. By then, you hope, the search firm will be engaged and have the process finally moving toward its resolution.

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