The University of Hawaii’s lack of urgency in putting its athletic house in order is confounding.

Athletic director Ben Jay resigned more than a month ago, but Manoa Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman just last week named a search committee, which is just posting the job.

The committee has a month to await applicants and more months to leisurely screen them; by the time Bley-Vroman picks from the finalists, he figures it’ll be mid-year before somebody is on the job.

This "bumbye" attitude plays against a financial crisis in which the athletic department faces a new $4 million deficit barely a year after being forgiven a $17 million debt.

Football, the cash cow, is noncompetitive in a second-rate conference and must pay opponents $1.3 million a year to play here before dwindling crowds.

The basketball coach was fired and the best player disqualified in an NCAA scandal, and the program faces painful sanctions.

Legislators and private donors are reluctant to provide desperately needed funding without a road map, and player recruitment is hobbled by the uncertainty.

We need to end the lame-duck limbo and get somebody working on these problems soon, not in six months.

The universe of folks qualified to run a Division I athletic program is small, and they all knew the job was open within days after Jay resigned; UH could have compiled a solid list of candidates by the new year.

Gov. David Ige hired a Cabinet full of administrators with equal or greater responsibilities in two months since the general election.

UH should certainly assess national interest, but many argue persuasively that after the failed regimes of capable-but-ill-fit Ben Jay and Herman Frazier, we need a local AD who can navigate the shark-infested political waters that have bloodied UH sports and the university in general.

The talent is here and several local prospects have been identified — if any would accept the job after seeing the muggings taken by every AD since Stan Sheriff.

The drawn-out UH search process, which culminates with finalists being paraded for a public vetting where disgruntled faculty and graduate students shout insults at them, is broken.

The degrading drama, along with Hawaii’s reputation for poisonous politics and skimpy resources, has kept away the best candidates — locally and nationally.

Two recent UH presidents the process yielded, as well as the last two Manoa chancellors and the last four athletic directors, were all later forced out — often with expensive buyouts.

The turmoil in athletics cries for more urgent and focused recruiting.

Instead of lazily waiting two months to see what comes over the transom, UH should be proactively identifying and pursuing top prospects — the same way the football coach recruits a quarterback.

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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.