Ever get pulled over and tell the policeman, “You got me, I was speeding, give me a ticket.” And the cop says, “Sorry, I don’t have enough information. Have a nice day. Drive safely.”
Yeah, me neither.
But that’s what in effect happened Tuesday at the University of Hawaii.
It looks like someone on upper campus has been paying attention to recent events and is thinking clearly and trying to be proactive amid a potential crisis of epic proportion.
But this could be nothing at all, just a wildly inconsistent football team that doesn’t cover the point spread very often and makes some gamblers very angry and others very rich.
The UH president and the chairman of the Board of Regents met with the chief of police Tuesday and promised “complete cooperation” with HPD’s investigation of alleged point shaving.
A serious issue, everyone agrees.
UH sent a statement out to the media, and within an hour even golfer Paul Azinger was tweeting about the allegations.
It was a blockbuster statement, a huge story in the making. Just one hitch: HPD said it’s not investigating at this time, due to lack of information.
I WILL give the UH administration this: it has apparently learned from some of the recent mistakes of other colleges.
Accusations of point shaving, if proven true (a very difficult undertaking, the proving, that is), could lead to wide-spread repercussions ranging in severity somewhere between those for players exchanging memorabilia for tattoos (Ohio State) and an assistant coach sexually abusing children (Penn State).
The common thread between the two Big Ten big scandals was a looking-the-other-way element by people in authority who had the power to stop wrongdoing and control the damage … including damage to their own credibility and that of their institutions.
It’s important to remember two things here: Just because UH threw itself at the mercy of HPD, it doesn’t mean the Warriors were tanking it. And just because HPD declines to investigate “at this time” doesn’t mean it won’t do so in the future — and now alerted, another entity such as the NCAA or the FBI might take a closer look.
Perhaps UH should launch its own inquiry. It used a lot of resources to investigate the men’s basketball coach for allegations much less serious (and of which he was cleared).
We can debate if in this case the attempt at transparency and being proactive is prudent, or if UH simply looks foolish for surrendering to a posse that apparently at this point doesn’t exist. Taking it head-on seems wise, though, considering the potential consequences of ignoring a possible scandal.
Hopefully for the Warriors, their fans and our entire state, there’s nothing to it.
At least UH has the institutional courage to get out in front of it … even if it might be a bus going a hundred mph.