Your guess is good as most on next UH athletic director

Can we please have a show of hands from all the folks confident in the University of Hawaii’s ability to wisely select the next athletic director?

That’s what we thought.

The hope, and indeed the urgent need, is that UH completely nails it because this is probably the most important hire at the position since Ray Nagel was asked to pick up the pieces from the tumultuous 1970s.

Which is why a lot of people who have been witness to other campus-wide hires are understandably nervous — and growing more so by the day.

It hasn’t helped that it required more than a month from Ben Jay’s resignation just for the process to grind to a start. Or that Friday marks a month from the time the search advisory committee was said to have begun reviewing the applications.  

Small wonder conspiracy theories abound. Was it a done deal all along for a local candidate, as some on the mainland maintain? Is the whole process window dressing for someone already in mind, as followers of past UH presidential searches fear? Will the job go to someone a powerbroker deems the most malleable? 

As a candidate who has watched it unfold from a ringside seat put it, “this is one of the strangest searches I’ve ever been involved in.” Another called it, “simply frustrating.”

And neither of them were Rick Blangiardi or Keith Amemiya, two prominent local names that, as of Wednesday, were without interviews. Or, explanation. 

Manoa Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman has correctly expressed the hope that the next AD will be someone “…able to think outside of the box because the box hasn’t been getting us very far.” 

Yet, UH is apparently insisting upon toeing a narrow minimum qualifications and equivalency line that may exclude who knows how many non-traditional candidates with skill sets it needs.

Blangiardi, general manager of Hawaii News Now, former UH football coach, pioneered UH’s TV contract with the late Stan Sheriff in the 1980s, was president of Telemundo and has been a network executive. He was nominated by Central Pacific Bank CEO John Dean, among others. 

Insurance executive Keith Amemiya ran the Hawaii High School Athletic Association for a decade, raising $1.5 million in the hugely successful Save our Sports fundraiser for high schools, bringing top mainland football teams here to play Kahuku and Saint Louis.

Both have called the shots in enterprises well above the $32 million UH athletic department.

At this point it is also a wonder that three of the short-listed candidates who have received interviews and been left cooling their heels, Hawaii Bowl executive director David Matlin, UH associate athletic director John McNamara and Texas-Pan American athletic director Chris King, haven’t pulled their names. Arkansas senior associate AD Jon Fagg already pulled his.

For all UH’s pledges of being “as transparent as possible” even some school officials are shaking their heads at the process. One that invites intrigue.  

Meanwhile, there is an on-going NCAA process the next AD should be weighing in on. In short order a men’s basketball coach needs to be hired. And, heaven forbid, what if some akamai institution makes Rainbow Wahine coach Laura Beeman an offer?

Imagine the show of hands then.   

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com.