In terms of longevity, David Matlin’s tenure as athletic director at the University of Hawaii is solid — actually, spectacular compared to his predecessors.

Matlin, who announced Wednesday that he will retire in June, started as the UH sports boss in 2015. He will finish after eight full years.

Matlin actually began his UH athletic director job before the official start date — in his previous role as executive director of the Diamond Head Classic (and the Hawaii Bowl), Matlin would attend the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four. While there in 2015 after having accepted the UH position, he kept his eye out for a new Rainbows basketball coach as well as teams for upcoming DHCs.

In the eight years before his hiring, five people held the UH athletic director post. OK, Carl Clapp and Rockne Freitas served short interim stints. But “interim” usually signals turmoil, and that’s definitely what there was on lower campus immediately after Herman Frazier in 2008 and Jim Donovan in 2012.

Frazier was fired after five years because someone had to be blamed for football coach June Jones leaving for SMU after the Sugar Bowl and the department’s money woes. Since it was his job to balance the books and negotiate a new contract for Jones, Frazier was the obvious choice.

Donovan’s downfall was the “Wonder Blunder,” a fundraising concert that turned out to be a scam and cost UH a $200,000 deposit. By most accounts it was a department team error, and the AD takes the hit on those. A toxic upper campus-lower campus relationship didn’t help matters.

Enter Ben Jay. He had some good ideas, but saying for publication that UH might have to cut its football program was not one of them. Exit Ben Jay.

That brings us to 2015, and Matlin inherited messes on the field in football and off of the court in men’s basketball. Football coach Norm Chow was entering his fourth season with an 8-29 record, and the NCAA was wrapping up investigating basketball for misdeeds under Gib Arnold.

Matlin’s two big early hires replacing them were first-time head coaches with Hawaii ties, and his choices of Nick Rolovich in football and Eran Ganot in basketball were excellent.

Not everyone agrees, especially in the case of Ganot. But Rolovich was hired away by Washington State after the Warriors went 10-5 in 2019, and Ganot is 125-80 overall, including the program’s first NCAA Tournament win, and 11-3 so far this season.

Matlin has hired 16 head coaches, and most of them have been the best choices possible, given the resources available. But he will be remembered for picking Todd Graham to replace Rolovich — and for not picking Jones last year when Graham resigned after a mass exodus of unhappy players.

Matlin hired another first-time head coach, Timmy Chang. His first UH team went 3-10 last fall. Maybe Chang will turn out to be a great hire with time; but for now he’s learning on the job. I’ll always be among those believing Jones was a no-brainer to hold the job for a couple of years until Chang or someone else was ready to take over.

In his years as AD, Matlin was challenged with the unprecedented and the unpredictable. It fell upon him to find the successor to legendary women’s volleyball coach Dave Shoji (Robyn Ah Mow). COVID-19 hit sports everywhere hard, but Matlin had to deal with empty stands longer than any other Division I college program in the country.

Then there is the inertia that is the yet-to-start reconstruction of Aloha Stadium. If the situation were not so frustrating and sad it would be funny (and probably is to coaches recruiting the same players Chang is trying to get).

Credit Matlin and UH for doing the best they can under the circumstances with turning an on-campus practice field into a mini-stadium — hopefully those seats being added before next season will be needed.

Matlin’s final months on this job will likely feature plenty of victories — especially if second-year baseball coach Rich Hill (another inspired Matlin hire) continues to spread positive energy, and the back-to-back national champion men’s volleyball team successfully fights off its many challengers.

Unfortunately for Matlin, one sport affects everything else in the athletic department disproportionately and he will be remembered by many mostly for a bad hire and a bad non-hire of football coaches.

But his legacy also includes excellent major hires in 2015 that stabilized and energized basketball and football — and a lot of other positive experiences and results through some very trying times.