It has been 73 years since the University of Hawaii last played UCLA in football, and as a contract to renew the competition languishes, some might wonder if it will be another lifetime before they get around to executing it.

Even in the best of times the bureaucracy in Manoa can move at a wounded snail’s pace. But these days, in the wake of the Stevie Wonder Blunder, we’re told it can be more like molasses crawling up University Avenue.

Word is more than three dozen items of athletic business, including game and tournament contracts for several sports, are backed up somewhere between the athletic department’s out-box and Bachman Hall’s royal chambers.

The most prominent among them being a contract insiders say that would match the Warriors against the Bruins in the 2017 season. The last time they got together to play a football game was 1939, and getting UCLA back on the schedule would be a long overdue coup.

Apparently the details have been negotiated, both athletic departments and coaches are in agreement. Now, all that remains is for someone in the ivory tower to hoist a quill and scribble the imperial blessing.

Signing off on game contracts was the kind of thing that once upon a time athletic directors at UH were entrusted to do on their own. At most schools of note they still are.

But then came the Wonder Blunder, and it is cover-your-posterior time at UH, where nobody does it better. So much so, that it has been only slightly tongue-in-cheek suggested the athletic department should be wary of so much as changing a light bulb without deliberation and clearance.

In this case it is not as if the AD, Ben Jay, or his people are wiring off a stack of moolah to a third or fourth party across the globe to secure a purported date with UCLA. In fact, UH isn’t laying out a cent. Word is the Bruins will be paying UH to go to the Rose Bowl to play.

At least they will if UH ever gets around to signing off on the agreement before UCLA tires of waiting.

Nor is it just marquee football contracts that are reportedly being held hostage to inefficiency. There are tennis matches and other proposed events languishing as coaches roll their eyes.

Does UH need oversight and due diligence when it comes to large expenditures of the public’s money? Of course. But do operations have to come to the kind of backlog that is developing? Hardly. Or, maybe UH just needs time to hire out on another study.  

Time and again over the years UH has shown us that it is unable to find a functional middle ground and, instead, careens from one extreme or the other.

Two years ago the school let the contract of men’s basketball coach Gib Arnold draw dust on somebody’s desk in Bachman Hall. That bureaucratic bumble has cost the school upwards of $150,000 — and counting — with a deal that had to be renegotiated.

Let’s hope common sense prevails soon. For sure, like the UCLA contract, it is overdue.

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