We’re getting like the South, where there are four major sports: college football, spring football, football recruiting and NASCAR. Except our fourth is volleyball, not auto racing.

For the University of Hawaii, spring football practice ended more than two months ago. But recruiting never ends, and with summer around the corner that means camps.

Things are looking up for UH, as first-year head coach Nick Rolovich led the Rainbow Warriors to a 7-7 record last fall after five consecutive losing seasons.

Now he needs to break the sophomore slump trend of his three most recent predecessors — June Jones, Greg McMackin and Norm Chow all had worse records in Year 2 than in Year 1.

I’ve always felt that the marginalizing of a good first season because a coach “won with the previous coach’s players” is unfair and often meaningless criticism. But it does speak to recruiting, and sometimes when the adrenaline associated with a coaching change wears off is when the real grind starts and we learn who can really do the job.

Although his recent haul of letter-of-intent signees was noticeably short of local talent, I believe Rolovich and his staff can and will improve in that area — even though so many of the prime prospects have been brainwashed from a very young age to go away for college instead of to Manoa.

It’s something UH has had to fight forever, and it’s now tougher than ever — especially since today’s teenagers have clearer memories of all those recent losing seasons than they do of the consistent winning of Jones’ teams in the ’00 decade.

The off-the-field HERO award bestowed upon Makani Kema-Kaleiwahea should help recruiting, and would in a perfect world where winning in life is given the right amount of weight. But even this fine young man was a bounce-back who transferred to UH (during Chow’s tenure), and many of the top-notch guys who go away figure they can always come home.

Rich Miano is famous for walking on at UH from Kaiser High and then starring in college and enjoying an 11-year NFL career. But even he has mixed feelings about what does and doesn’t help local student-athletes as he prepares to run the GPA College Showcase camp June 7 and 8 at Saint Louis and whether they should stay or go if they have the chance.

The Rainbow Warrior Football Elite Camp hosted by Rolovich is slated for June 9 and 10.

Last year the GPA camp had around 580 participants and 73 coaches, Miano said. Even with Marcus Mariota’s Motiv8 foundation on board now as a sponsor bringing prices down, the endeavor faces challenges this year due to a rule that prohibits FBS coaches from attending camps away from their own schools.

Unless an exemption is granted for Hawaii because of the costs associated with players from here attending mainland camps, the GPA camp will be mostly about matching non-Division I talents with small schools. An example is Division II Adams State assistant Derek Faavi, who won UH’s Most Valuable Player award as a fourth-year starting center in 2005; the Aztecs already have six players from Hawaii on their roster.

But that won’t keep the big-time schools from recruiting studs from Hawaii like Faatui Tuitele; he’s the new “it” guy, even though the 6-foot-3, 270-pound Saint Louis defensive lineman isn’t scheduled to graduate until 2019.

“A lot of people who know are saying he has the talent to end up being the best defensive lineman in the history of the state, and that’s saying a lot,” Miano said. “Explosiveness, hips, legs, smarts.”

At last count on our Hawaii Prep World website, he’s got 14 scholarship offers, including half of the Pac-12, a couple of SEC schools and Notre Dame.

“The ‘haves’ have grown so much and distanced themselves,” Miano said. “But there are kids who are still smart enough to say to themselves, ‘Hey, I might not go to the NFL and I’m going to live in this community. There are people who will help me after graduation because I played for UH.’ ”

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quickreads.