As the University of Hawaii was picking up the pieces from the fallout of the Wonder Blunder, confronting rising coaches salaries and examining the tab on long-running deficits, the Board of Regents sought more insight into its athletic programs to prevent future headaches.

“The moral and financial hazards of intercollegiate athletics are significant for the student-athletes, the team, the campus it represents and the university system as a whole,” a regents task group reported. As a result, it recommended the creation of a committee “… that would focus exclusively on intercollegiate athletics and would serve as a portal to the board for all related issues.”

Today, six years after commissioning its Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, a subsequent board is expected to vote to eliminate a committee dedicated to athletics.

Because, as we all know, none of those problems could ever arise again.

Citing the reduction in board membership from 15 to 11 as mandated by the recently passed Act 172 and, “in order to sustain effectiveness of the board,” a proposal scheduled to go before the board today recommends reducing the number of standing committees from seven to five.

Under the proposal, the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics would be folded into the existing Committee on Academic and Student Affairs. The Committee on Personnel Affairs and Board Governance would be absorbed by the Committee on Planning and Facilities, which would be renamed the Committee on Personnel, Planning and Facilities.

What, on the surface, might sound like just so much housekeeping actually flies in the face of a national trend by universities to seek greater understanding and oversight of their athletic programs.

Not fingers in the pie, but a reasonable grasp of where their athletic programs are going and how their administrators propose to get them there before problems hit the headlines.

Because of the ways athletic programs can reflect upon their institutions — and you only have to look at the scandals around the country — the respected national Association of Governing Boards has for years recommended universities having a dedicated committee with “a defined role of looking at intercollegiate athletics.”

At UH’s two campuses with intercollegiate athletic programs — Manoa and Hilo — the combined athletics enterprise exceeds $50 million annually, not counting the substantial investment in facilities.

The UH oversight committee model actually seemed to work well. Regents largely refrained from meddling but gained a wider knowledge of their athletic programs. They received regular updates on academics, missed class time, athlete services, facilities and finances from officials involved.

To see athletics as more than budget line items and beyond slide shows, several times a year a coach from one of the Manoa or Hilo teams met briefly with the committee to discuss their program.

Regents said they found wide-ranging question-and-answer sessions with the coaches particularly enlightening.

As regent Stanford Yuen told Rainbow Wahine soccer coach Michele Nagamine after a discussion in February, “This really helps us to understand athletics from a (perspective) that we wouldn’t otherwise get.”

As it was intended to do.

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