Jay knows real businesses need real business plans

The man with the plan laid it all out for us Thursday.

Well, sort of.

Most of Ben Jay’s strategic vision for the University of Hawaii athletic department he’s been in charge of the past eight months has been no secret … to anyone paying even a little bit of attention.

Jay has been generous with sharing his plans from nearly the day he got off the plane from Columbus, Ohio, talking about his ideas, including renovating facilities, going after big donations and positioning UH for the Great Breakaway.

On most things, he’s been as transparent as Glad wrap.

(Did you ever notice the business people and politicians who are most transparent are the ones who never use the word? I’ve never heard Jay say it.)

Some might say he’s a little bit too open, like when he complained on Twitter about maintenance on lower campus and saying he’d take care of some tasks himself if he had to.

If and when the top schools jump ship from the clutches of the NCAA, Jay wants Hawaii among the haves, not the have-nots.

That might sound impossible, but that’s his mandate. That’s why he’s here. If it means changing a few light bulbs himself, oh well. But it also means a lot of fundraising, a lot of salesmanship, and that’s not quite as simple.

Now things are real, he’s put forth his plan on how he’s going to fix the entire thing. It’s all down on paper and on the Internet, all in one place for anyone who wants to read it.

And we have some fairly precise numbers, like the goal of expanding the annual budget to $40 million from $32 million.

That’s great, as long as he can continue to meet it year-after-year. As we have seen in the past, UH athletic budgets are apparently made to be broken. It’s easy to make a budget, not so easy to maintain one.

I don’t think there’s much chance for another deficit bailout. In fact, someone at the press conference was already asking Jay when he might reciprocate on the kokua from upper campus.

Maybe that will be when Larry Ellison field at Oracle Stadium opens. Hey, has anyone asked? Jay said Hawaii has the most millionaires per capita in the United States, but monetary gifts to the UH athletic department do not reflect that — yet.

He is targeting the big boys for the kind of money he used to help pull in at Ohio State.

Or maybe the athletic department will help out the academic side when UH hits that top-50 list of NCAA programs that Jay stated as a goal, one of the few new nuggets gleaned at the media gathering.

He says his measuring stick is the Directors Cup standings, where points are awarded for how well teams in the various sports finish overall. UH was 103rd last year, but has been as high as 66 in the past.

Jay hopes that with the help of Diamond corporate sponsors, like Outrigger Hotels and Resorts and Hawaii Pacific Health, UH will climb that chart.

A lot of their help is “in kind” services, but Jay needs cash, too. The next time he holds a big meeting talking about his big plans, it won’t be with us to get the word out.

It will be with those who can make it happen.

And he won’t be shy about asking for what UH needs.

“Bring your checkbooks,” he said.

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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783 or on Twitter as @dave_reardon.