This is not the big-time program UH wants to be

So University of Hawaii sports has finally hit the big time again, six-and-a-half years after appearing in the Sugar Bowl.

Running in the same circles that Heisman Trophy winners Cam Newton and Johnny Manziel did would normally be considered pretty cool. Unfortunately the current circumstances are anything but that.

UH is lawyering up with the same high-priced talent Auburn and Texas A&M did when Newton and Manziel came under NCAA scrutiny in recent years.

We don’t have reason to believe the UH basketball program is being investigated for flat-out paying for a player, which was alleged in Newton’s case, or that a player made money off autographs, like Manziel (at UH, only the coach gets to do that).

But it’s looking more and more like the Rainbow Warriors could suffer death — or, at least some fairly serious sanctions — by a thousand cuts.

Today’s revelation (and longtime suspicion) that an iPad might have been misappropriated to a student-athlete, along with some other no-no benefits, is just the latest in a long line of mostly petty misdemeanors the NCAA has been looking at for at least five months.

The NCAA’s new system allows for elevating the level of misdeeds due to quantity of infractions. And a source close to all of this says the original one that UH self-reported might be considered by the NCAA as a Level I or II violation (out of four levels, with the lower numbers being the more serious).

The dreaded “institutional control” phraseology comes up when you’re talking Level I.

But you know what UH is probably going to get whacked hardest for? Not having its stories straight.

We are told the investigator has had to go back to the same interviewees several times, partly because new questions arose, partly because he got different answers to the same questions from different people.

And here’s another wrinkle, thanks to technology: emails and text messages. Phone records are one thing. The actual conversations are another, and we’re told the NCAA has its hands on some that are not pretty for UH.

Athletic director Ben Jay declined to comment for this article, but he knows from his experience at Ohio State that the worst things that can happen during an NCAA investigation are questions that lead to other unbeknownst problems and answers that are not completely true.

Prior to Tuesday’s story revealing the securing of expensive legal help, fans could delude themselves with the optimistic belief that the investigation was taking so long because the NCAA had come up with nothing, and it would eventually grow weary of all this and cut bait.

Now their hope has to be more along the lines of damage control, or that the pros from Dover (actually, Birmingham, Ala.) can find some major flaws in the investigation. Remember Miami?

The two sides have already met at least once. There’s no time to waste, because once the NCAA delivers a Letter of Allegations and things really go public it could be too late.

Or maybe it’s all nothing. Does anyone really believe that anymore?

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. Read his blog at staradvertiser.com/quickreads.