The last time the University of Hawaii was a member of a 16-team conference, the school demanded — and received — the "equality" of not having to pay travel subsidies.
But the man who negotiated it in 1996, then-UH president Kenneth Mortimer, understands that might not be possible for the school today.
When Mortimer saw estimates of the $1.2 million-$1.3 million UH is obligated to pay in what is now termed "travel-cost sharing" as a condition of membership in the Mountain West Conference and Big West for 2012, he said, "I almost choked on that. But I understand they had to do that. I can’t be critical of that. There was nothing else they could do."
UH, which will pay to underwrite conference opponents’ travel here in 2012, has yet to learn if — or how much — it might have to pay when the MWC dissolves in 2013 to form an as-yet-unnamed 16-member, coast-to-coast (and beyond) amalgamation with Conference USA.
"There has been no decision on that," said Scott Cowen, Tulane president and chairman of the C-USA Board of Directors.
Neal Smatresk, Nevada-Las Vegas president and chair of the MWC Board of Directors, said he expects UH’s travel subsidy terms in the new conference to remain largely as they will be for the MWC.
In the MWC, UH is obligated to pay $150,000 to each California-based MWC football opponent and $175,000 for each foe from beyond California.
In the 2012 football season, four teams from beyond California — Boise State, Nevada, New Mexico and UNLV — are scheduled to play at Aloha Stadium.
Meanwhile, UH will receive no subsidy when it hits the road for Air Force, Colorado State, Fresno State or San Diego State.
UH is also contracted to pay lesser travel costs for Big West opponents in other sports. Those costs are estimated to run $500,000 to $600,000 per year.
The school has had a winding and contentious history with travel subsidies. UH agreed to underwrite conference opponent travel when it joined the Western Athletic Conference in 1979, but mostly covered the cost from the West Coast to Hawaii.
When the WAC expanded from 10 to 16 members in 1996, Mortimer won an end to those subsidies, casting it as an issue of "equality" in the new, expanded league. But UH officials subsequently said the revocation came back to haunt them when the WAC broke up three years later.
"I’ve talked to athletic directors who were part of the original Mountain West, and they were clear in their statements to me that if we were in a position of paying some travel subsidies we likely would have been a member of the original Mountain West (in 1999), too," athletic director Jim Donovan said. "I think when you walk in the shoes of an athletic director on the mainland, there is a cost issue about playing the University of Hawaii. So, I think it is a reality that we have to be aware of where they are coming from."
But Donovan said the NCAA’s so-called "Hawaii exemption" — which permits teams traveling to play here an additional game to help recoup costs — can be a "mitigating factor." And, Donovan suggests, "there is a sense of fairness that while it is more expensive to go to Hawaii they are also paying to go to other schools across the country. So there may be some sort of an offset we can look at."
Mortimer said that it bothered him that when other schools complained about the cost of traveling to Hawaii, they didn’t take into consideration "how much it cost to travel from Fresno, Calif., to Tulsa, Okla., and subtract that cost from what they wanted us to pay."
Hashing out travel costs is an issue likely to remain with UH in the new conference. UH President M.R.C. Greenwood said, "Maintaining a quality Division I setup for athletics at Manoa is more difficult at Hawaii than it is, for example, in one of the other (Mountain West) schools. It is just a reality of, as our governor says, being a state where the nearest (opponent) is 2,500 miles away."
