Just about a month ago, there were reports of dwindling student attendance at UH football games.
A Star-Advertiser story was headlined: “UH student attendance at football games falls nearly 90%”.
According to the story:
Athletic director Jim Donovan was asked by Board of Regents vice chairman James Lee on Wednesday why “the last three games the stands were empty (of students)?”
Hawaii News Now reported:
The declining numbers are even more difficult to understand when considering that for the first time, students can attend games for free. Last January, every student had to pay a $50 student activity fee. In return they are eligible for free tickets. There’s even a free shuttle from campus to Aloha Stadium.
“Difficult to understand” the low student interest?
Fast forward to this week.
Item #1. Norm Chow, the new UH football coach, makes his first public appearance to introduce his newly selected coaching staff. And did this first public appearance by the new coach take place in the crowded Manoa student center, where there’s lots of excitement during this first week of Spring semester classes, or perhaps later in the day near the UH dorms and athletic complex, where it might attract students, faculty, and staff of the Manoa campus?
Nope. It took place in a basement restaurant downtown, at a lunch event organized by a brand new booster group, the Downtown Athletic Club (“Coach Chow wows ’em at first public appearance in Hawaii“, Star-Advertiser breaking news).
According to the group’s press release:
The Downtown Athletic Club is a non-profit organization founded by Keith Amemiya, Peter Ho, Kalowena Komeiji, Duane Kurisu, Don Murphy, Raymond Ono and Kurt Osaki. Through monthly luncheons and other events, the club will provide a venue to discuss, debate, support, enhance and raise awareness for local sports. The inclusive club hopes to create a bridge for corporations, community organizations and government to facilitate and promote sports throughout the state.
Hawaii Business Blog reported:
The Downtown Athletic Club is a non-profit founded by Amemiya, Peter Ho, Kalowena Komeiji, Duane Kurisu, Don Murphy, Raymond Ono and Kurt Osaki. (Disclosure: Duane Kurisu is the chairman and CEO of aio, the parent company of ESPN 1420 and PacificBasin Communications, which publishes Hawaii Business magazine.)
Kurisu is also a director of Oahu Publications, owner of the Star-Advertiser.
There’s no mention this morning of whether any UH administrators or faculty athletic committee representatives were present or played any role in the event. Governor Abercrombie is visible, front and center, in a Star-Advertiser photo. UH administrators? Not so much.
To be clear, I’m glad there’s interest and that these folks are organizing to support the athletics program.
But wouldn’t it have been, well, diplomatic, to introduce the coach on campus first and at least maintain the appearance that football is a university activity, perhaps even inviting those downtown supporters to set foot on the campus?
Item #2–also this week, a story in the UH campus newspaper, Ka Leo: “President’s office ignores ASUH request for student inclusion.”
Several interesting bits tucked away here. It seems Anna Koethe, the elected student government president on the Manoa campus, never even got a reply to letter to UH President M.R.C. Greenwood requesting student representation added to the football coach selection committee.
According to Koethe, these arguments found sympathy with Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw, but the issue was not under her control. “Hinshaw was responsive and supportive, but even though it was a M?noa issue, the [UH] System decided to take jurisdiction over it. No one from the System or Athletics responded,” said Koethe.
The difficulty here is that NCAA rules require Manoa Chancellor Hinshaw to have control of the athletic program, and the university has just recently given assurances to the NCAA that this is the case.
In a required self-study submitted to the NCAA in 2011, UH stated:
Specific to the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Board of Regents policy states that the intercollegiate athletic program shall be administered by the Director of Athletics under the direction of the Chancellor.
And, as I pointed out in an earlier entry, the NCAA’s primary governance rule requires authority over the athletic program to be lodged at the level of the Manoa chancellor.
Once again, the way this selection process was handled directly contradicted the university’s previous assurances to the NCAA, and appears to have been run counter to NCAA governance rules.
So back to the question of student attendance. No mystery. When their representatives expressed interest, they apparently didn’t even got the courtesy of a reply. Isn’t that a clue?
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I guess that if you build it, they will not necessarily come after all. Kevin Costner was wrong. Unfortunately, that applies to a lot of projects in this town. Greenwood is intelligent, and she probably knows that football at UH will never be able to compete and will eventually fold, but she has her marching orders. But the real decision makers are the kind of guys who run medium-sized cities in places like Texas and Australia, who went to state universities (although they did not necessarily graduate), and they love football more than they love their mothers. They are a confident bunch, but they don’t read books and they spend all their time around people just like themselves brainwashing each other. This is how it is all over the world. (Remember the Bush White House?)
I think UH is probably not all that different than other universities. College football, like other levels of the game, has become big business with a school attached.
Ian, Also the restaurant/bar is owned by the same guy on the selection committee (Kurisu) and all of the other UH deals….seems pretty cozy.
Ah, well, Ian, who cares? I am neither a student nor a downtown business person, but I am a UH alumna, who donated $150 to UH — $50 to football, $50 to women’s softball, and $50 to UH Foundation — last year. This year? Who knows. Put your money where your mouth is, folks.
You are right. Money talks!
Poor Norm Chow….the frenzy that has been created (marketing) has put him in a tough spot. Living up to the high and probably unrealistic expectations will be nearly impossible. It was nearly laughable that the football “community” is crazed about his naming of assistant football coaches that nobody has heard of from small D3 schools or Canadian football. Also, a 70 year old offensive coordinator? You made a good point that no one from UH Admin was in any of the pics….not even the AD. Seems like our new coach now works for the business hui…dangerous?
I suggest you have overweighed the NCAA,. This is a very bad cartel that has been abusing Hawaii schools for years.
It has confusing policies, unfair application of them and little direction. It tends to screw women athletics and smaller colleges. It is autocratic and bureaucratic to the max and has been for 50 years.
If the NCAA needs to make an example of a school where the tail wags the dog, UH is going to be perfect. It is not big enough to fight back and the team is not BCS so no one will care. The big boy programs will humor the NCAA by acting suitably impressed, and will rein themselves in for a bit, then carry on as usual. And the MANOA football program will continue to be subsidized by student tuition money.
Why criticize the Downtown Athletic Club for scheduling Norm Chow for its first monthly luncheon, where Norm Chow is the type of speaker DAC is organized to bring in and now is the time when excitement for him abounds?
Why suggest DAC or Norm Chow should have bypassed downtown and gone to Manoa?
Why not instead criticize Manoa for not scheduling a Hemenway or dorm event, where they got lots of hosts, from Athletic Dept to MRC Greenwood’s office to ASUH to dorms and such?
It’s not a zero sum game; there was and is nothing to stop UH from setting up its own events, and based on Norm Chow’s go-anywhere promise at the Hukilau, there is good reason to believe he will go to Manoa with his uplifting spirit if they call.
DAC and business people and Norm Chow are not to be criticized but applauded for taking the initiative to give him the call and help build a program.
As for Athletic Dept and MRC and so forth, they’re once again demonstrating the difference between town and gown, business and academs.
Ian, why should it matter (to you , to the NCAA) whether the football program is run by the UHM campus administration or the UH System? Aside from the administrators’ territorial dispute, is there an impact for the community to care about?
(Question here is not meant to be cynicism, so much as I think I must be somewhere missing the point you’re pushing.)
MY take on UH Manoa, specifically the undergraduate experience, is that the entire campus suffers from a gigantic problem with morale.
Simone, Mortimer, and Dobelle tried but in the end the same two themes always surface: UH is a commuter campus and nothing on campus ever gets done right because the UH system is paralyzed by state driven bureaucracy.
Unless the undergraduate experience improves at UH top recruits will continue to stay away.
At least Chow was allowed by his handlers to complain about the poor condition of the locker rooms. But like Von Appen, Jones, and McMackin, Chow will leave UH before his contract is up frustrated with a college system that has no leadership and sense of direction.
GO WARRIORS!
One thing we could do to improve student morale at UHM is to levy a $50 student fee to support the athletics department, and then make attendance at games free. It would kill two birds with one stone.
Oh, wait…..
Anyway, read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/how-big-time-sports-ate-college-life.html
Norm Chow – new state official extrodanaire officially deemed as the new charaismatic and truly wise head of UH football coaching – in fact actually slept on a futon (!) last night, according to the Honolulu Advertiser (January 12).
Disgusting idea (but true, blazingly now true).
Do the Los Angeles Lakers make Kobe Bryant, at least as productive, sleep as ridiculously cheaply, like some damn cat, in ways that could injure his very sanity? Despite Proposition 13 in California killing almost any form of thought since Grey Davis this is how hard it is to find accomodation. Don’t they have beds anymore in Hawaii? What about the Kodak Hula Show – are their thumba thumba charms now confiscated by the HPD?
What if Kobe wants to do a quick energy layup at any given time and, man, he’s been unnecissarily been ten-teamed by some stupid ferile centipede! Where are
the simple, the basic, beds?