Santa Claus is coming, but he’ll probably skip UH

Gov. David Ige is scheduled to send his executive budget to the Legislature on Monday and unless the University of Hawaii alum is overflowing with Christmas spirit, it could portend a bleak year for the school’s struggling athletic department.

With the latest in a string of annual deficits projected at $3.5 million, athletics has long shown that it has fallen and is unable to get up.

Nor is it finding many outstretched hands willing to help.

UH president David Lassner and Manoa chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman have said they have no funds from the academic mission to spare for propping up an indulgent athletic program and it is up to the Legislature and community to come to the rescue.

Legislators, for their part, have so far said that with autonomy it is UH’s call on how to parcel out the $405.5 million it gets in state general funds. Meanwhile, the community is buying fewer tickets and writing smaller checks.

Whether you agree with departing athletic director Ben Jay’s stewardship of the 21-sport, $32 million program these last two years — and more belt tightening and fiscal discipline could have been accomplished — he is right about at least one thing when he says, "Everybody is waiting for somebody else to take care of the problem."

Meanwhile, UH’s teams are becoming less competitive across the board and public confidence has plummeted.

In better times, politicians bumped into each other, waving campaign signs at Aloha Stadium that touted their pride in UH and what it meant for the state. And school administrators proclaimed athletics the "front porch" of the university.

What UH desperately needs now is a gathering of these disparate groups and stakeholders on that front porch. Not to point fingers or pass the buck, but to huddle and plot realistic solutions.

The UH model is outdated and badly broken and whoever UH hires as its next athletic director —whenever that might be — is going to need some help in creating a viable new one.

Fact is athletics receives less than 1 percent of the general funds bestowed upon the university. Much of that for lower campus janitorial services, landscaping and some administration.

In the leagues UH competes in, its outside support is either at the very bottom or within shouting distance of it. This while it faces higher costs due to its geography.

Athletics receives none of the proceeds from parking for athletic events on its own campus. Nor does it share in the millions in advertising signage or concessions revenue from its games at Aloha Stadium, where it is the marquee tenant. Though it is charged for stadium clean-up.

Some years it gets not a cent from the Hawaii Tourism Authority despite the TV exposure and fans from the continent its events draw.

All of this, of course, while the Pro Bowl writes its own check.

That is less the fault of Aloha Stadium than the state, which gives the facility’s management and Stadium Authority its marching orders and oversees its operation.

But an accounting of the benefits UH athletics provides to the school and state needs to somehow be monetized. Be it in the form of a credit chit to be applied at fiscal year-end audit or some hard cash up front.

Continuing to wait for Santa Claus or Larry Ellison isn’t the answer.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com.