Men’s basketball coach Gib Arnold has 20 so-called "performance incentive" clauses in his contract, and softball coach Bob Coolen has but four.

Some coaches get $500-$1,000 "performance incentives" for each 30-minute postgame autograph-signing session, up to a maximum of six per year. Others have to be named conference coach of the year to cash in like that.

Some get paid extra for road victories or televised triumphs, and some for ticket sales and turnstile-count milestones.

Welcome to the often arbitrary and usually confusing labyrinths of what used to be called "bonus" provisions at the University of Hawaii. Some of them so pie-in-the-sky ridiculously difficult and others so laughably easy to meet that they have been a waste of the paper they were printed on.

It is a situation that demands realistic reform with an eye toward narrowing the focus of what the department is really asking its coaches to do. 

FULL STADIUMS and arenas, 100 percent graduation rates, championship seasons and credible national TV showings are among the goals, of course. But where is UH asking its coaches to take highest aim?

In the past, despite the best of intentions, even just laying out a clear message has sometimes eluded UH. In 2010-11, we’re told a Bachman Hall-led effort at standardizing contracts resulted in Arnold’s initial agreement being left to languish on somebody’s desk for so long that based upon his highly successful (19-13) inaugural season, representatives were able to leverage a $104,000-a-year salary raise.

So, as athletic director Ben Jay and officials set about reviewing the contracts anew with an emphasis on major change, it will be interesting to see where they place the priorities and how they go about trying to encourage them.

What duties — such as operating within the bounds of conference and NCAA rules and promoting the program in public, for example — will they consider an integral part of the job, and which others will be deemed grounds for extra pay? Will victories bring a much more lucrative return than graduation rates?

"I’m going to take a look at those clauses and see how they fit with the model I’m thinking of here," Jay said. "Our coaches should be focused, basically, on the performance and academics of our student-athletes and not some of those other things out there."

Jay said, "I’m trying to find the right balance. I mean, I want our coaches to coach and let us worry about the rest of that stuff. That’s why I’m looking at standardizing our contracts." 

TO BE SURE, the vast array of attendance and ticket-sales target provisions currently contained in contracts haven’t had the intended result of making the department financially solvent after an extended string of red-ink finishes. Otherwise, Jay’s own agreement, like those of his predecessors, wouldn’t be offering a $15,000 reward for each year the athletic department has a "year-end balanced budget."

For UH, again, the devil is in the fine print.

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