If there’s one thing apparent about the new governor, David Ige, it is that he is not into hyperbole.

So, when he said this week that from his perspective the Honolulu Marathon is the state’s “most important sports event,” he wasn’t just stroking the ego of Jim Barahal or taking a passive-aggressive shot at the Pro Bowl or the Sony Open.

Barahal, the longtime president of the marathon, was also in the room at the Honolulu Country Club, to be inducted into the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame along with surfing icons Sunny Garcia and Randy Rarick.

The marathon is a three-pronged event. It is mostly about community fitness and visitor spending; the part about being a race is a distant third.

Who even remembers who won five months ago? Put your hands down, Toni Reavis, Jonathan Lyau and David Monti. You too Barahal. They’re among the few who know it was Joyce Chepkuri and Wilson Chebet without Googling it.

The fact that they’re less well known among sports fans than the long snappers in the Pro Bowl doesn’t really mean anything.

The real reasons Ige ranks the marathon No. 1 has to do with those thousands of visitors from Japan and elsewhere and all that money they spend here, adding up to economic impact of more than $100 million.

And, yeah, having done it once himself, Ige knows first-hand about the sense of accomplishment and confidence a person can gain by completing a 26.2-mile course.

Barahal gets some of those same feelings by the marathon stimulating the economy, and without the assistance of the Hawaii Tourism Authority. But he said he has had some recent talks with the HTA, and why not?

The marathon fills hotel rooms and Waikiki restaurants and their cash registers, but there’s always room for more; there’s no sense in not helping success be even more successful for the public good.

The 2016 Pro Bowl is here, so there’s $4 million in HTA seed money accounted for (invested well, most of us agree; extortion, say others).

But what about 2015? The NFL’s all-star game was in Arizona this year, which means — unless I’m missing something — there’s a lot of money that can go to other sports marketing.

George Szigeti is the new director of the HTA, and hopefully he understands how important sports are to this state’s economy … if he doesn’t, maybe his predecessor, Mike McCartney, can remind him. And, oh, by the way, McCartney now just happens to be Ige’s chief of staff.

So, why not give some of that funding to the state’s college sports programs. They bring money to the state’s tourism industry with every home game … whether it be the tangible of visiting teams and fans needing places to stay, or the less calculable of media exposure.

The UH athletic director, David Matlin, is friends with David Uchiyama, senior VP at the HTA, and they are both friends of Jim Donovan, the former UH AD.

The last time UH got money from the HTA was when Donovan was running lower campus.

Maybe it will get some now. It always should. As should the marathon.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.