Nagel helped UH believe it could play in the big time

The University of Hawaii football team went 3-8 and lost its spring game to an alumni team, whereupon the coaches quit and 33 players threatened to leave.

Three candidates for the football head coaching job turned it down, the Legislature spiked an overdue campus facilities upgrade and the men’s basketball team had just gotten hammered with two years of sanctions by the NCAA.

Oh, yeah, and UH was still trying to gain admission to the Western Athletic Conference.

And you thought things were tough at UH these days?

That was some of what Ray Nagel had to deal with in 1976-1977 upon taking the athletic director job at UH.

Recalling the most tumultuous period in UH sports gives fresh perspective to the remarkable work of Nagel, who died last week in San Antonio at age 87.

Nagel was an honorable mention All-American quarterback and tailback at UCLA, a head coach at Utah and Iowa and served as athletic director at Washington State before investing seven years (1976-83) as AD at UH.

Later he would have a brief stint in the front office of the Los Angeles Rams, become a co-founder of the Aloha Bowl with Mackay Yanagisawa, serve as an officer at Bank of Hawaii and run the Hula Bowl.

But UH, where he would describe the early work as "daily crisis management" was the scene of his biggest, most enduring triumph.

Nagel, who had learned the virtues of hard work toiling at his German immigrant parents’ bakery in Los Angeles’ Farmer’s Market, brought discipline to UH. His urbane style and smooth confidence were uplifting. He also projected stability and, because of his name and resume, validation to a chaotic athletic department badly in need of both.  

A prime example was the hiring of a UCLA assistant coach, Dick Tomey, to rebuild the football fortunes. Tomey was the fourth coach UH offered the job. He said one of the reasons he took the job was that he trusted Nagel, who he had known at UCLA. 

"Ray gave me somebody to believe in," Tomey has said.

The NCAA also listened to Nagel and he was key in getting UH certified for Division I membership after years of "small college" status and a limbo period.  

"Anybody who knows Ray knows if he runs into a rock he’ll find a way around it," a UH subordinate was fond of saying. 

Tomey eventually turned around the football program and in 1978, after twice being rebuffed, UH was invited to join the WAC, which it did in 1979. Football crowds soared to a school-record average of 44,651 at one point.

During Nagel’s tenure the Rainbow Wahine volleyball program won two national championships, baseball went to the championship game of the College World Series and the athletic department moved into a $12.2 million facility. 

What he did at UH alone punched his ticket to the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Hall of Fame. 

Much of Nagel’s best work took place behind closed doors and on tennis courts. A lawyer by training and a politician by nature, Nagel rallied disinterested legislators, brought on board skeptical campus officials and won over mettlesome boosters. The ones he didn’t convert, his wife, Shirley, often did. His thriftiness — the state car he initially picked out was a lurching Vega — impressed donors and the public.

In the process, Nagel helped change much of the "Division II mentality" that had pervaded Manoa athletics and opened a path to a brighter future.

Nagel and his successor, Stan Sheriff, were viewed as the two greatest athletic administrators in UH’s history.

The kind that UH can only pray to be blessed with in its present circumstances.

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