You don’t have to be kama‘aina to be the University of Hawaii’s head football coach. You can be anyone from anywhere if you know what you’re doing.

Just win games and be real about things. Or win enough games so you don’t have to worry about the second part.

If you pull down more than a million dollars a year of taxpayer money as the state’s highest-paid employee it’s preferable you do both.

If you project a love and understanding for things Hawaii, and the same for the military, and you’ve lived here five years, you should probably know what the phrase “Go For Broke” refers to.

But according to Greg McMackin on his “Call The Coach Show” this week, he “learned a new word.” (Not “a new saying,” but, hey, who’s perfect?). When a supportive caller told him “Go For Broke,” McMackin made a joke alluding to Las Vegas. And yes, while the phrase’s origins are gambling-related (roughly the equivalent to “all-in”), it is much better known as the motto of the 100th/442nd infantry, still based on Oahu. The most decorated unit of its size in U.S. Army history and one of the proudest of Hawaii’s local institutions was even in the news recently.

No one expects McMackin to know everything about everything local. In and by itself, this is just one little point. Sort of like the one most teams make routinely after scoring a touchdown.

Like I said, win enough games and it doesn’t really matter.

But, to me — and I know at least a few others — it is indicative of a problem. It is part of why there is so much hesitancy in extending McMackin’s contract, even if he wins the rest of his games this season, even at a lower salary.

The problem is appropriate communication.

It was there for all the nation to see in 2009 when he attempted to make a joke at the WAC media meetings but used a word derogatory to gays. It could have gotten him fired. In retrospect, it should have.

This communication problem hasn’t manifested itself to that magnitude again since, but it’s still there. It often comes in the form of him forgetting names of players. This used to happen to Bobby Bowden. But Florida State was winning, so everyone just laughed it off.

But the laughing stops when the winning stops.

Also in 2009, McMackin repeatedly talked about how he would find “11 Hawaiians to run around on defense.” People cringed, but gave him a pass. He meant well, but that’s inappropriate public phraseology for a current era football coach, especially one in Hawaii who claims local sensitivities.

At a practice in Reno, Nev., last week, McMackin took a total of at least 15 minutes to speak individually to two media members, and to chastise a third (me) in front of others about things I wrote in the paper. The NCAA mandates limited coach-player interaction time. He talked to us when he should have been running his practice.

That 15 minutes of lost coaching probably wouldn’t have made a difference in the loss to Nevada, but you see the point. A lack of focus on the task at hand.

McMackin took over a UH football program with heightened expectations and a salary — as ridiculous as it was and is — reflecting such. When those expectations aren’t met in the won-lost columns, the other stuff becomes harder to ignore … especially at $1.1 million a year.