UH will no longer depend on donors to pay coaches

On paper it looked like a win-win situation for the University of Hawaii, the idea of having boosters help fund big-money coaching contracts.

But. as with too many things at UH, it hasn’t always gone as planned.

So, beginning with this latest round of new contracts, UH officials say they will no longer look to boosters to augment salaries or try to chase down deadbeat donors.

"I don’t want to be dependent all the time on making sure each and every one of those donors that made a commitment pays up," athletic director Ben Jay said.

Men’s basketball coach Gib Arnold is believed to have been the last coach with a so-called "overload" agreement in his contract.

Under terms of his $344,000-a-year deal, $50,000 was to have come from what his contract described as, "university solicited donations."

The athletic department and UH Foundation have over the years declined to identify donors.

Donors initially made good on their pledges but later began coming up short, UH officials said. According to UH, the account was fully funded in fiscal year 2012, $15,000 short in 2013 and $50,000 short for 2014, as of the beginning of this month.

Arnold’s pending three-year extension, which has yet to be signed by the interim Manoa Chancellor, "is a straight-up number," Jay said.

Arnold is believed to have agreed to a deal in the neighborhood of $365,000 annually.

The practice of using donor funds gained popularity when UH signed then-football coach June Jones to an $800,016-a-year, five-year renewal in 2003. At the time, UH officials endorsed the plan, saying it had "historic precedence" since a range of university employees, including faculty and researchers, had been paid through public money and private donations.

At the time it was the largest salary ever given to a UH coach — later surpassed by Greg McMackin’s $1.2 million — and half of Jones’ money was to come from booster funds through the UH Foundation to soften the blow.

Several of the approximately dozen boosters signed multi-year pledges to contribute in amounts of $25,000-$100,000 per year to a "UH Football Coaching Staff Support Fund."

But by Jones’ final season, 2007, UH said it was forced to fill in some of the gaps.

Baseball coach Mike Trapasso had a $25,008 "overload" to be paid out of booster funds in the contract that ran until June 30, 2010, but hasn’t had one since. UH officials said those donor obligations were fulfilled.

Still, "as a business practice," Jay said he is against outside-funded contracts. "One of the reasons that I don’t like it is because we should budget what the salaries are and pay them as such. I don’t want to have to be reliant on donor money (and not knowing whether it will come in)," Jay said.

There was also the question of whether, when all else failed, UH could use some on-campus muscle to collect on overdue debts.

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