The quick and easy conclusion as the University of Hawaii athletic department has seemingly wandered from one crisis to another is that Manoa is in need of more helping hands at the top.

As if there aren’t enough cumbersome committees around campus already.

So we probably shouldn’t be too surprised that there is a well-meaning bill in the State Legislature that seeks to add yet another layer of oversight to UH athletics, a grandly titled "Board of Governors."

This would apparently be in addition to the less than two-year-old Board of Regents Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, which was created in the wake of the "Wonder Blunder" and only really put to work in August.

Now comes House Bill 539, which proposes a seven-member panel consisting of three members of the Board of Regents, a financial management specialist appointed by the Governor, an active coach from the athletic department, a member appointed by the Speaker of the House and another member appointed by the President of the Senate.

However positively intentioned the proposal, that’s a lot of powerful agendas to pack into one meeting room. That many competing political entities sure sounds like a prescription for more problems, not fewer.

If governmental guidance was really the way to go, then why beat around the Capitol? If action and instant accountability are the goal, just appoint the President of the Senate herself — Donna Mercado Kim.

Fact is when you’ve had the last Governor give "suggestions" to an athletic director on which sportscasters should be involved in TV broadcasts, indications are that the politics needs to be reined in, not turned loose.

History tells us that UH athletics is at its most efficient when it has a strong and capable leader actually out front leading. Not when it has layer upon layer of overseers.

The late Ray Nagel and Stan Sheriff were successful as athletic directors because they were good at what they did and the people above gave them room to do their work.

By all means insist upon checks and balances, but they need not be piled so deep as to become stifling. The structure already in place has the Regents, who order an annual audit of athletics, overseeing its Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, which is above the UH President, the Manoa Chancellor and AD.

Once upon a time, well several of them, really, UH athletics tried the board approach to supervising athletics. It had a Board of Athletic Control off and on between 1938 and 1965. There are reasons UH finally abandoned the practice and more as to why athletics subsequently flourished for decades without one.

To be sure UH is going through a tumultuous period and has brought the increased scrutiny upon itself with continued red ink and an NCAA investigation. In these straits it can use all the help it can get. It needs the support of Washington Place, the Capitol, Bishop Street and everywhere else.

But UH’s best chance to emerge from its current state is for the powers that be to hire the right people and support them. That doesn’t mean expanding the peanut gallery.

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