More than likely they will gather in a well-appointed, high-end hotel, but there will be no mistaking where the University of Hawaii is when it goes before the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions on July 16-17.

"It will be just like a courtroom," said an athletic official who has sat in on half a dozen such hearings.

"It will have that courtroom feeling, complete with a court reporter," said the official, who asked not to be named because he still has business with the NCAA. "It will be very formal, very serious, (and) it can be quite intimidating."

It is college athletics’ version of being summoned to the principal’s office and it will be the turn of UH men’s basketball in Indianapolis when case No. 00202 goes to hearing.

Though the Office of the Division I Committee on Infractions is on the third floor of the NCAA’s headquarters in Indianapolis, hearings invariably take place at a hotel meeting room in that city or elsewhere. Syracuse’s hearing was at a Chicago hotel. USC’s came in Tempe, Ariz.

An NCAA official was asked if the COI, as the committee is known, might like the opportunity to conduct its UH business in Honolulu. "We take the matters seriously," was the reply.

OK, so maybe the boxes of macadamia nuts and Big Island Candies won’t distract from the bylaws.

New UH men’s basketball coach Eran Ganot, athletic director David Matlin, Manoa Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman, faculty athletic representative David Ericson and attorneys will be on hand for UH, a spokesman said. Former coach Gib Arnold and his attorneys are also scheduled to attend.

They will argue their polar opposite positions before the COI, one of the most powerful and, yet, little understood of the NCAA’s more than 120 committees and panels.

The COI is often described as a "quasi-judicial" body that operates more like an arbitration panel than a court. Parties to the proceedings, such as UH and Arnold, do not cross-examine witnesses.

Chairman Greg Sankey told the Star-Advertiser that while the panel votes, "the committee deliberates pretty actively and tries hard to arrive at points of agreement rather than simply decisions by vote." Sankey, regarded as one of the most powerful figures in collegiate sports, takes over as SEC commissioner Aug. 1.

All of it will be conducted behind closed doors with participants pledged to secrecy until the committee issues its report a month or more later. The COI may accept UH’s self-imposed sanctions or add some of its own. The parties may appeal to the Infractions Appeals Committee, which issues a final disposition.

The COI UH confronts will have from five to seven members selected from an overall pool of as many as 24 and will be composed of current or former university presidents, senior administrators, athletic directors, coaches or members of the general public with formal legal training.

The most well-known member of the pool is former basketball coach Bobby Cremins. There’s also a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

It is a setting likely to make the opposing parties both feel like road teams.

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