The idea seemed ho-hum simple enough: Oceanic Time Warner is considering making Kapolei High football coach Darren Hernandez a sideline reporter on its University of Hawaii football games this season.
But as the cable company — not to mention the rest of us — is learning, there is no such thing as simple when it comes to the shadow cast by the voluminous NCAA rule book.
Even the sidelines at Aloha Stadium, it seems, can be fraught with NCAA regulatory land mines.
Which is why Hernandez could find himself either upstairs in the TV booth or his whole crew banned from talking to coaches during the broadcast when the season rolls around next month.
The problem, UH said after consulting compliance specialists, is that a high school coach having contact with a college coach in an interview situation on the university’s broadcast is an NCAA no-no.
Never mind that a sideline reporter, if he talked to a UH coach at all, would most likely ask about injuries, lineup changes or how UH planned to stop the wishbone. Or that a UH coach, if he had time to talk, would hardly use the few seconds to beseech Hernandez to point a prize linebacker to the Warriors.
What’s the UH coach going to say, “I’ll tell you if the right tackle has turf toe if you help us sign your all-state nose guard?”
You can understand, perhaps, the NCAA’s fear that a school could finagle a broadcast spot for a high school coach as a way of sliding him money. Except that the well-respected Hernandez already has a history of working Oceanic’s OC 16 high school games. And, as someone at UH put it, “for what these jobs pay, you’d be lucky to get somebody to send you their water boy.”
The debuting megabucks University of Texas network this isn’t.
Indeed, the chances of something shady taking place under such circumstances are so bizarre that it is amazing that UH was even prompted to query compliance officials to dust off a 23-year old bylaw. But, give UH credit for covering its bases. Because when it comes to the NCAA, an organization so pedantic that it once grilled UH about the correctness and sensitivity of using the nickname Warriors, you apparently can never be too careful.
“The preliminary feedback that I’m aware of is that as long as there is no in-game interview of any UH coach, that is OK,” said Jim Donovan, UH athletic director. A UH coach may be interviewed pregame or postgame by a different Oceanic crew, just not the one Hernandez is working with, UH said.
Oceanic general manager/executive producer Dan Schmidt said it has yet to be decided whether Hernandez will do color commentary from the booth with Robert Kekaula, who is doing play-by-play, or work a sideline opposite Lori Santi. Nate Iloa is also in the mix.
Schmidt said, “That paradigm has not yet been decided” but whatever is done, “we don’t want to put UH in a bad position, so we’re going with whatever their recommendations are.”
Good thing.
I mean, the first UH game Oceanic will do is the Sept. 24 UC Davis contest, and the last thing the Warriors would want is to forfeit a victory or be hit with some penalty because a sideline reporter did nothing more sinister than ask head coach Greg McMackin about a change at left guard.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com.
