We can’t tell you yet who the new permanent athletic director at the University of Hawaii will be, but increasingly, signs are pointing to the likelihood of who it won’t be: a local candidate.

If the process wasn’t already headed in that direction, then the announcement of Keith Amemiya’s departure as executive administrator and secretary of the Board of Regents after 21⁄2 years sure framed it that way.

Amemiya, it was announced, will leave the regents’ office (he is not a voting board member) at the end of the month to be a senior vice president with Island Holdings Inc., parent company of Island Insurance.

At one point in July, when Jim Donovan was removed as AD, the expectation was that Amemiya would be among the more prominent candidates for the post. But when Amemiya deigned not to put in an application and then agreed to take a place on the 11-member search advisory committee, that speculation ended.

Two other leading local figures, UH vice president Rockne Freitas and TV executive Rick Blangiardi, have also not chosen to put in applications, which pretty much accounts for the most viable in-state candidates.

And that’s too bad on several fronts, because, given the fallout from the Stevie Wonder fiasco, UH athletics is at its most vulnerable point since the turmoil that surrounded the NCAA sanctions of the mid-1970s.

Institutional knowledge and community roots are qualities sorely in need up there right now, and these three could have made immediate, positive impacts.

Freitas, a former NFL All-Pro who was associate AD to Stan Sheriff in the 1980s, is the acting AD. Blangiardi, a former UH football player and assistant coach who put together the local TV package with Sheriff 30 years ago, has been in the TV business on local and national levels for 30 years. Both could have supplied the kind of strong hand needed.

One thought had been that if Amemiya, 47, wasn’t going to go after the AD job this go-around, he might come on board as the right-hand man and heir apparent for whoever did get the job, especially with Freitas and Blangiardi in their 60s.

That suggestion made a lot of sense given Amemiya’s vast contacts and proven ability to raise big money. As executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, Amemiya tirelessly sold the Save Our Sports concept to the business community to raise $1.3 million to keep sports in public high schools afloat in 2009 and ’10. He was also behind putting the NFL together with the state for new facilities at Roosevelt High and, more recently, led the drive that has raised more than $650,000 to fund public school intramural sports.

In addition, Amemiya, who serves on the Board of Education as a Neil Abercrombie appointee, has considerable ties with Washington Place and the legislature. All of which would have made him a valuable resource and partner in the new athletic administration.

Word has been that Amemiya had been talking with Island Holdings for many months but was keeping an eye open on the UH situation. As the Wonder Blunder impact deepened — who knows, for example, if UH will still have M.R.C. Greenwood as president much longer? — it isn’t hard to imagine Amemiya seeing a more stable and lucrative future in the corporate world with a chance to perhaps double his current $151,000 annual pay.

It remains to be seen where the next UH AD will come from, but the 808 area code is, unfortunately, looking like a long shot.

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Reach Ferd Lewis a flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.