Mufi Hannemann wants to be very clear about some things. He did not apply to be the University of Hawaii athletic director. He is not against Craig Angelos, the new AD.
But he does have some very good questions.
Hannemann, the former Honolulu mayor, said he was asked by several influential people to apply. Angelos, the Long Island University senior deputy director of athletics, was approved by a hesitant Board of Regents on Thursday.
“I told them I need (the AD’s job) like I need a hole in my head,” Hannemann said in a phone interview Saturday, adding that he is very happy as president and CEO of the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association. “But if the criteria is right, I would consider it.”
The criteria did not pass the smell test from the beginning for Hannemann and several other viable local candidates. They were not alone in perceiving the search advisory committee composed by UH President David Lassner as skewed toward an internal replacement for outgoing AD David Matlin.
UH did change course when it was called out by Artie Wilson and other prominent student-athlete alumni for stacking the deck.
But was the rerouted path to Brooklyn really the right direction to find the right person for the job?
Was Angelos, 61 and a second-in-command for most of his 30 years working at university athletic departments, really the best candidate available?
UH doesn’t need a deputy. It needs a sheriff — one like Stan Sheriff, who knew the local angles well enough to do things like convince the Legislature that UH needed a 10,000-seat arena, not a smaller one. Sheriff died in 1993 while still the AD, and that facility is named after him.
If someone applied whom the regents might deem a better fit, they were not made aware of it. That’s why they spent nearly three hours in private session Thursday tossing around one name instead of two or three — at least officially, that is.
The way we were told this worked — or didn’t work, as many see it — is that the president received three to five names from the committee and then the president gave one, Angelos, to the BOR. Only one name went to the BOR, and it was one that few people in Hawaii had even heard of before it was announced May 12.
”A head-scratcher for me is the president said this is the second-most important job in the University of Hawaii system, and he’s chosen someone who hasn’t been an AD in 10 years,” Hannemann said. “Another head-scratcher is that he picked someone who has no experience dealing with our culture, our environment and our people.”
As provincial as they seem, these are legitimate concerns. History shows them to be.
The last two ADs at UH with such limited local experience were Herman Frazier and Ben Jay. For various reasons, they ran afoul of key people who can make or break an athletic director at UH as much as a football coach’s win-loss record can: the Legislature and leaders in the business community. They’re the ones who can help the department get what it needs — things like a real stadium and a real training table, things that help the coaches recruit and the student-athletes compete on level playing fields.
Of course, the same thing can happen to an AD with local ties. If you need a reminder, just flash back to that state Senate hearing after the 2021 football season that resulted in coach Todd Graham’s departure.
Hannemann emphasized that he does see positives in Angelos.
“We all want to give someone a chance,” Hannemann said. “What I can see is he’s driven. He’s had experience building a stadium. And he seems to be an excellent communicator, far better than some of his predecessors. What he has to do now is reach out to the community with that ability to communicate and sell himself.”
Some of that should have happened before Angelos got the job Thursday. But while the state Sunshine Law required his name be revealed six days before the BOR voted on him, there is no rule that the BOR be allowed to interview him — privately or publicly. That’s why so many regents made negative comments about “the process.”
Yes, it was awkward because past hires of Manoa ADs were made by a chancellor and then approved by the president. But now, since there is no Manoa chancellor, the president chooses and it’s the BOR’s job to approve or not approve.
“Why not let the regents interview the three finalists and let the public watch? It should be all about transparency and openness,” Hannemann said.
There’s certainly precedent for that.
When Lassner was voted president by the regents in 2014 after a year as interim, the BOR heard public testimony before interviewing him and the other finalist, Army Lt. Gen. Frank Wiercinski, also publicly.
Thursday, Lassner said it was his call not to reveal the names of other AD finalists. The reason given by UH was some candidates would not want their employers to know they were applying elsewhere.
That makes it interesting to note that last January the names of four finalists for dean of UH’s nursing school were announced before their on-campus visits and interviews with a variety of stakeholders. Three of them held jobs at places other than UH at the time.
Granted, every case is unique. But whenever we’re talking about a high-level state job — especially one like athletic director that pays more than $325,000 a year — transparency should be required, not optional.
