Is this rock bottom for the University of Hawaii yet?
Because we thought we’d hit that three years ago with the Wonder Blunder, when UH sent $200,000 as a deposit for a concert to a man claiming to represent Stevie Wonder. Great fundraising idea, except the guy turned out to be a con man.
But, hey, that’s nothing compared to what went down Thursday, when the Board of Regents (narrowly) decided there was no better option than to make a wealthy man out of a former coach who was fired for allegedly breaking NCAA rules.
With the money they are getting from UH, ousted basketball coach Gib Arnold and his lawyers could place down payments on three mythical Wonder concerts and still have $100,000 left to book the Beatles for the opening act.
Arnold was fired without cause, where the usual deal is the former employee gets paid whatever he would that is remaining to the end of his contract. But the language in his agreement is so bad it can be interpreted to mean — without an unreasonable stretch — that UH is obligated to pay him everything he’d already been paid … again.
And that’s why UH is out another $700,000.
It was estimated that with ensuing fallout the Wonder Blunder ended up costing the university around $1 million. But it’s hard to measure the collateral damage of lost confidence and lowered morale for students, faculty, staff, teams, fans and potential donors — plus any other stakeholders, including all taxpayers since this is a state institution.
Thursday’s settlement is the worst individual incident in the seemingly never-ending saga of UH throwing away money due to poor judgment and incompetence. Manoa chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman called it controlling "the damage to the university."
"We were interested in moving forward as quickly as we could and we had the opportunity of settling," Bley-Vroman said.
A settlement avoids the possibility of losing $1.4 million instead, plus the costs of a drawn out battle. But what if the NCAA finds Arnold was guilty of the violations? Bley-Vroman said he doesn’t think it would matter.
"From my point of view we want to get both of these things over with," he said.
Who doesn’t? But that’s a large chunk of change to just write off and pretend nothing happened. Here are some other things $700,000 could be used for:
>> About $1,500 more for each UH student-athlete’s cost of attendance stipend. They receive an average of $1,000 each now. The $2,500 would still be less than the annual average for Mountain West Conference schools of $3,813.
>> Round-trip charter flight for 100 people from Honolulu to Ann Arbor, Mich., … with plenty of change. The football team plays at Michigan next year and the odds are already tough without 300-pound linemen having to wedge into tiny seats on commercial flights.
>> Nearly enough to buy out football coach Norm Chow, who is 10-33 in his fourth season. When asked about Chow’s future, Bley-Vroman responded, "What Coach Chow said himself: What’s next is Albuquerque. We will take it one game at a time."
