University of Hawaii football coach Todd Graham may be the highest paid state employee in Hawaii, but there may be some second guessing among the powers that be after several days of devastatingly bad press targeting the coach.
The critical public comments concerning Graham’s short tenure were first shared by RJ Hollis and Darryl McBride via a Twitter Space on December 1.
The criticism was picked up by the website, Mountain West Wire, a couple of days later, under a headline, “Trouble in Paradise out in Hawaii?”.
Then it hit the mainstream, with a bomb thrown by SF Gate, a newsy website that I think is still owned by the San Francisco Chronicle, with its own sharp headline: “Inside the miserable tenure of Hawaii football coach Todd Graham.”
Since then, the story has been picked up and repeated by other media, such as the website, SportingNews.com (“ Hawaii football players allege mistreatment by Todd Graham, say he ‘has killed our love and passion for football‘”).
This has obviously been building for some time to reach the point where top players start fleeing to other locales to finish out their college careers, and others speak candidly about their own experiences.
The question for media watchers is simple. Have the criticisms and team tensions been reported previously by the Star-Advertiser or local broadcast stations, or were they politely ignored?
Can any of you who pay more attention to sports fill us in?
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Fire the Coach!
Add this to high number of players who left the men’s basketball program and you have to wonder what’s going on with the athletic department and AD Matlin. Why can’t we hire coaches who players like, if not love?
Wow…that’s a long article at “SFGate” dedicated to lil ‘ol Hawaii!
If you were here reading the Star-Advertiser, you’d think everything is hunky dory! Methinks something is UP!
Graham sounds like an ass from all accounts. He hired his son for a job ( offensive coordinator ) that he is not qualified to do. UH will be a D2 program before we know it.
In the grand scheme of National sports, Hawaii having problems in the locker room is not even a blip on the radar. There is no wrongdoing alleged. Just allegations that a football coach not being kind or fair to some disgruntled, anonymous athletes. This type of tension goes all the way down to Pop Warner football when a parent gets mad that their kid is not getting on the field. Parent, child, or fan tantrums are a 1st world problem.
Some of things alleged absolutely violate the coaching code of conduct.
Way past time to give up UHM football. It’s utterly obscene that coaches are paid so much for mediocrity!
Yes, UH football is a massive distraction and actually inhibits the true function of the university which is education for the purposes of social mobility and stability. If the Star-Advertiser can’t even cover sports, it really is headed for the trash-can liner.
To answer your question, no these issues were not previously reported by the local Hawaii media. The only reason why it is being lightly covered now is because SFGate knew it had an opportunity to go big from across the Pacific. Shame on the Hawaii sports reporters. Today’s article in the S-A is even more shameful.
The problem here is that the sports reporters become friends with coaches and administrators and then forget that they have a journalistic duty to uphold. Can you imagine political reporters befriending senators and representatives and then holding back on any negative news?
I bet an investigative piece on this strange and longstanding tradition between Hawaii sports reporters and coaches would unveil some fascinating examples of unethical doings.
sad more people upset about the UH football program than the drinking water with petroleum in it.
Hardly. But, maybe they both reflect a defect in our culture—excessive deference to and reverence for sports and military that distracts us from other important matters.
To clarify, SFGate is not exactly owned by the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s owned by the Hearst Corporation, which owns the Chronicle (and should be ashamed). Describing SFGate as “a newsy website” is pretty accurate. It can also be described as an amateurish collection of click bait and badly re-written articles about subjects covered by other media, and quite often just rehashes of selected Yelp reviews and the like. The best thing about SFGate is that there is no pay wall, and it’s certainly worth the price of admission. The UH coaching story was one of the rare SFGate stories of any depth and that included actual interviews and independent reporting. It was written by a free-lancer, not SFGate staff. That explains a lot.