The University of Hawaii is asking sponsors to help underwrite the estimated $1.2 million in travel subsidies it has pledged to provide for Mountain West Conference and Big West Conference opponents in 2012, President MRC Greenwood said Wednesday.
Some of that assistance could apparently come from a portion of a naming rights agreement being negotiated with Hawaiian Airlines for the field at Aloha Stadium, people familiar with the plans suggested.
Without specifically naming Hawaiian, Greenwood told the Star-Advertiser editorial board, “We’ve made a commitment to be in the Mountain West and to do that we have to be there. Does that mean we’re going to work with every vendor that we can to get the best possible options? Yes. Does that mean we might be asking our (sponsors) to give us miles? Yeah, we might be doing that. We might be doing anything we can to reduce the cost of travel.”
A spokeswoman for Aloha Stadium management declined comment, but an official of its marketing partner, Aloha Sports Properties, said last month an agreement with a sponsor that the official would not name was close to an announcement.
Since UH is the marquee tenant for the facility and the major lure for a naming rights deal, the stadium authority has been pushing for the school to share in any agreement in some form.
Greenwood said, “We’ve been talking to the (Hawaii Tourism Authority) and have been talking to other organizations to see what they can do to help our teams. Every time somebody tells me that they are a big fan, I say, ‘How are you proving that?'”
As a condition of football-only membership in the MWC, UH has agreed to provide Pacific Time Zone-based opponents $150,000 for each trip and Mountain Time Zone foes $175,000 per trip.
Big West opponents in most other sports will have the option of either having UH book the trips or being paid a per-head stipend based on mutually agreed upon roster sizes. UH officials have estimated the initial combined costs of subsidizing opponents from both conferences to be approximately $1.2 million per year.
Greenwood said, “I know there has been interest at many levels of the state to try and help us with that. (The travel burden) is obviously something we have to face. We’re 2,500 miles from the nearest land mass and as much as we like to sell paradise, they still have to buy the tickets.”
After her first meetings with the MWC Board of Directors, Greenwood said, “All the rest of the presidents are saying the same thing, ‘My travel budget is…’ “
When it was suggested that the travel subsidies will go a long way toward helping them, Greenwood said, “I guess they see it that way. After we beat them they may think of it (differently). They may wish they didn’t make that deal, you know.”
